Exercise 27 Page 368

We are told that a data set gives the ages of voters for a city election. Then, Classmate A says that the data should be displayed in a bar graph, while Classmate B says that a histogram would be better. We are asked which classmate is correct. Let's first recall the definition of these two data displays.

• Bar Graph: Shows data in specific categories.
• Histogram: Shows frequencies of data values in intervals of the same size.

We could make a bar graph to display ages. However, it is an extensive data set to make a bar for each category (each age). Conversely, since ages are quantitative data, it would be easier to split them into equally-sized intervals, find each frequency, and make a histogram. Therefore, the data would be better displayed in a histogram. This means that Classmate B is correct.