Chapter 15 — Data Through Pictures

Chapter 15, Data Through Pictures, teaches students how to collect, record, and read data using tables, pictographs, and bar graphs. Real-life situations like TV-watching habits, shop inventory, and food wastage in a school canteen are used as examples.

A pictograph represents data using pictures or icons where each icon stands for a fixed number of items. In the chapter, Joseph Uncle's helper Dipesh uses one icon to represent 5 items (toys, board games, or sports items) to record shop inventory without drawing a picture for every single item.

A scale tells you how many real items each icon in a pictograph stands for. Dipesh used a scale of 1 icon = 5 items so that large numbers of shop stock could be shown using fewer pictures.

A bar graph uses vertical bars on a grid to show data, with a horizontal base listing categories and a vertical line showing numbers. In the chapter, Sheela records her daily routine as a bar graph, while Raman records the same kind of information in a table, showing that a bar graph gives a quick visual comparison at a glance.

Samaira and Kabir collected data from 35 friends and recorded how many hours each child spends watching TV every day in a notebook table.

Joseph Uncle's toy and games shop is used to explain pictographs. He needed to record large quantities of toys, board games, and sports items, so his helper Dipesh suggested using one picture icon to represent every 5 items of each kind.

Deepti used a scale where one icon represents 3 two-wheelers. She noted down the number of two-wheelers passing her house in one hour on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and used this scale to draw her pictograph.

The bar graph shows the amount of food wasted in kilograms in a residential school canteen on each weekday, with different food items such as sandwich on Monday, paratha on Tuesday, khichdi on Wednesday, puri-sabzi on Thursday, and idli-sambar on Friday.

The chapter has a hands-on activity where students cut paper strips equal to their own index finger length, then paste the strips vertically on a bar graph grid to visually compare whose index finger is longest and whose is shortest.

Using a scale allows you to represent a very large number of items with just a few icons, making the pictograph easier to draw and read. Without a scale, drawing one picture for every single item would be impractical when there are many hundreds of objects, as seen in Joseph Uncle's shop.

The chapter includes collecting data on hours children spend watching TV, recording how many two-wheelers pass a house on different days, comparing daily routines of two children, measuring index finger lengths, and tracking food wastage in a school canteen over five weekdays.

After showing the food wastage bar graph, the chapter asks students to think about why food wastage is a problem, how it can be reduced, and what can be done with leftover food, connecting the data reading skill to real-world responsibility.