Name ____________________________ Period ___________

Charts and GraphsCharts and graphs are a great way to visually display and summarize information. They are especially useful in comparing and contrasting different areas or time periods. Pay attention to all the details contained in these infographics, especially the labels and units of data items.

Chart #1

As you can tell from the title, the chart above describes some key features of the first four ancient civilizations that we will talk about. The first column on the left lists the features that the chart describes, while the first row (below the title) lists the civilizations. The intersection of the rows and columns gives you important information – for example, the intersection of the “China” column and the “cities” row tells you important cities in China.

1. Which of these civilizations had specialized workers creating pottery?

2. Which civilization invented the wheel?

Pre-AP World I P a g e | 1S3. Interpret information presented in charts and graphs.

Skills Charts and Graphs

Chart #2Some charts are simpler; rather than searching for the intersection of rows and columns, you can just read straight across using only column headings, as in this chart comparing Roman and Greek gods and goddesses.

GREEK NAME ROMAN NAME RESPONSIBILITIES

Aphrodite Venus goddess of beauty and love

Ares Mars god of war

Artemis Diana goddess of hunting and childbirth

Athena Minerva goddess of war, wisdom, and crafts

Demeter Ceres goddess of the harvest

Hera Juno protector of women; wife of Zeus/Jupiter

Hermes Mercury messenger of the gods

Hades Pluto god of the Underworld

Poseidon Neptune god of the sea

Zeus Jupiter king of the gods

3. Who is the Greek god of war?

4. What is his Roman name?

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Skills Charts and Graphs

Graph #1

Graphs look just like what you might see in math class. This is a line graph, which is often used to show change over time. The line plots the number of famines (the vertical axis) against the time period (the horizontal axis).

Using the graph, you can identify when something happened most frequently, as well as look at the trends over time.

5. During which century did France have the most famines?

6. Were famines generally becoming more or less frequent in France?

Graph #2

This is a bar graph, which allows you to compare change over time AND between two places, for example, England and France.

7. Which of the following best describes the trend in crop yields?a. Crop yields for both England and France increased.b. Crop yields for both England and France decreased.c. Crop yields increased for England, but decreased for France.d. Crop yields decreased for England, but increased for France.

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Skills Charts and Graphs

Graph #3

This is a pie graph that shows the relative size of different bits of data. Each individual pie graph shows the relative amount of pottery from each of three sources (locally produced, European, and “other”). The three pie graphs compare how much pottery different social classes obtained from each of those three sources.

8. Which social class obtained the most pottery from Europe?

9. Which social class(es) obtained the majority of their pottery from local producers?

It is important to remember that these are not numbers, but percentages based on the comparison of three different types of pottery. It may be useful to look at this data another way:

Locally produced pottery European pottery “Other” potteryLow status households 92% 6% 2%

Middle status households 68% 21% 11%

High status households 58% 27% 15%

This table shows the same information, but without the ease of size comparison provided by the pie graphs.

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