Dot Plot

A dot plot, also known as a line plot, is a way to represent numerical or categorical data in which each data point is represented with a dot above a horizontal line with numbers or categories. Dots representing the same measurement are stacked above each other. Consider the following data set. { 4, 4, 3, 1, 4, 4, 1, 4 }

• There are two 1s in this data set, so two dots are stacked above the number 1 on the number line of the corresponding dot plot.
• There is one 3 in this data set, so a single dot is drawn above number 3.
• There are five 4s in this data set, so five dots are stacked above number 4 on the number line.

Dot plots are normally used for discrete data. For data sets containing more than 20 data points, dot plots are often inconvenient and other representations are preferred.