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EQUATIONS OF SCIENCE
Lesson 3 - Page 1

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LESSON 3.  Exploring Graphs

Graphs are found in many forms of communication from newspapers to television.  They help communicate information in a pictorial fashion.  Graphs also help us interpret results as well as to predict values without doing experiments. Creating a graph requires data.  You can plot data on a graph and by drawing line’s can help predict information without actually collecting the data.

When researchers tell others about their work, they frequently display their data using charts and graphs.  Graphs and charts provide a visual diagram that can be read and used to interpret the data.  This makes them an effective means of communication. 

Graphs and charts have been used since written record, and various graphing techniques are still used today.  A graph is a pictorial presentation of a relationship among 2 or more items.  Graphs can be used to easily visualize a mathematical relationship. There are even computer graphing programs that help scientists,  economists, statisticians, and many other people create and interpret graphs easily.

There are several differ ways to present data. Some are a way to communicate the information (i.e. pie graphs) while others can help interpret data and find relationships (i.e. line graph).