More About Graphs

Good morning everyone! How did you do on the data and graphs essay? Was it difficult to write about statistics? If it's any consolation, it will be just as difficult for me to edit your essays, so please think about me this weekend!

Let's spend a little more time on graphs and do some online exercises. These will give us additional practice with English expressions often used when working with graphs.

Line graphs
Column graphs
Bar graphs
Pie graphs

Next, please check the topics below, click on a link of your choice, read the article, and write a blog comment in English. Be sure to say which article you are commenting about and write your name, please.

English articles:
Temperature record of the past 1000 years
Japan vs. U.S. crime statistics
(You can also compare other countries with this site)

English article with Japanese video:
AU vs Softbank network speed

Japanese articles:
Japanese article on 2010 most popular companies for job hunting
Japanese survey on smart phone apps
Japanese survey on types of smart phones people have
Japan smart phone carriers
Japan middle & high school use of cell phones

Traditional Japanese Bonito Fisheries

by CCC

There are many traditional fisheries in Japan, but they are disappearing little by little because it is hard to catch fish by traditional fishing methods. People who catch fish in traditional fisheries are decreasing. In particular, people who catch bonitos by hook-and-line fishing, one of the traditional methods, are decreasing.

Please look at the bar graph (above). The vertical axis shows catches of bonito in tons and the horizontal axis shows years from 1960 to 2008. The bar’s contents shows the proportion of ways to catch bonitos. The dark gray bars at the bottom show the proportion of hook-and-line fishing, and the middle bars show the proportion using purse seine. The top bars show other methods. The largest proportion from 1960 to 1980 is hook-and-line fishing. But from 1980, the proportion using purse seine starts to increase rapidly, and most bonitos are caught by using purse seine now. The catches by hook-and-line fishing in 2000 are the same as in the 1960s.

This graph shows that most bonito fisheries between 1980 and the present use purse seine. Using purse seine catches many more bonitos than catching by hook-and-line fishing, so most fishermen now use purse seine. But hook-and-line fishing doesn’t catch too many bonitos and doesn’t put as much stress on the bonito population. People are talking about whales and tunas, but they aren’t talking about bonitos. If people don’t start to talk about bonitos, they may disappear faster than whales and tunes.

Source

http://database.asahi.com/library2/main/start.php
Kikuzo II visual Asahi Shinbun Database

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Using Data & Graphs in Your Essays

This week, you need to find a topic that interests you that has some data or statistics that you can present. You should write about the topic and include a graph to help the reader understand the information. There are two basic types of article you can write:

A general information essay with data -
For example, you might choose "cell phones market shares" as your topic, and you might find some data showing which cell phone companies have what market share now. If you have good market share data, you can make a pie chart showing which companies have what percentage of the market. Of course, you also must write in words what all the data means.

An advocacy essay with data -
This type of essay takes a point of view on a topic. For example, I am concerned about shark finning and the decline of sharks around the world. I can write an essay about the problem and show a graph with data on how sharks are declining in the world's oceans.

When you look for data on your topic, please try to use reliable sources. A student blog, for example, would not be considered reliable.

You must also list your sources at the end of the essay in this assignment. If your source is a website, you must write the name of the site, the date if known, and the URL.

When you put the data in your essay, please use the graph function in Word. Part of this assignment is learning how to use the graph function so you have experience with it if you need to make graphs in the future.

Be sure to choose the correct type of graph for the data you want to explain and be sure to represent the data accurately. Think carefully about your data. You can't, for example, simply compare the number of smokers in Japan to the number of smokers in China. Why? Because the populations are so different. It would be better to compare the percent of people in each country who smoke.

Today you will spend most of your time trying to find a topic to write about and search for reliable statistics that can be represented in a graph. Gambatte!

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Reading Graphs Can Be Tricky

Graphs are great because they make understanding data simpler. You can look at a graph and tell at a glance which portion is greater or which trend shows an increase or decrease. However, reading graphs can be tricky. We have to look carefully at the units and make sure that they make sense. When comparing two similar graphs, we have to be sure that the units match, or we may arrive at erroneous conclusions. Look at the following graphs on this page about drink sales in Japan.

http://www.j-sda.or.jp/about-jsda/sd-statistics/stati02.html

What do you notice about the figures? For example, look at the 2008 graph for sales of carbonated drinks and compare it to the 2008 graph of juice drinks. The graphs seem to show the same amount of sales, because the bar is at the same height for each. But look at the figures to the left of each graph. Carbonated drink sales were 3 million kl in 2008, while juice drink sales were half of that! The bars in the graphs are the same height, but the units are completely different!

Can you find some more differences in the units? Please be careful when using data from graphs, and be sure the units match up when you compare them. Also, always be sure to include your source so I can look at the original data when I read your essays.

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The graph at right illustrates the bonito catch for the Data Essay in the comments below. The comments box doesn't allow images, so I have posted the graph here. This image is a scan from a Word document, so the quality is not so clear.