Question

Will works for a company which produces both computer hardware and computer software. He is preparing for a meeting with his boss. He has been asked to compile sales data from a five-year period for both hardware and software sales. The data will has gathered is in the table below, but it is scrambled and hard to read. Sales are in hundreds of thousands of dollars. "H" and

"S" indicate hardware and software, respectively.

Year | 2003 | 2004 | 2002 |
sales| 35.5 | 42.0 | 40.6 |
Div. | S | H | H |
continued..
2005| 2002 | 2003 | 2004|
40.6 | 40.1 | 42.6 | 35.2 |
S | S | H | S |
| 2001 | 2005 | 2001 |
| 42.8 | 38.4 | 42.2 |
| H | H | S |
In order to make this data more readable, Will has decided to put it into a graph. Which of the following graphs accurately
represents this data?

a. l
b. ll
c. lll
d. lV

Answer 1

b. II

Explanation:

Graph I is not a good representation of the data because pie charts are used to represent percentages not the actual values, like in the graph I.

In graph III and IV the data is incorrect, for example for year 2001 hardware sales were 42.8, not about 35 (it is not clear from the photo).

Graph II accurately represents the data because we can clearly see the difference in hardware and software sales for each year, and selecting one of the categories we can see its evolution along the time.