Interpreting Graphs Worksheet for Spotting Bias

Critical Thinking and Graphing and Media Literacy all in one! This middle grades math lesson for students in grades 6-9 helps teach your class about how graphs can be displayed in tricky and misleading ways. Your students will learn how to spot these biases and re-create the graphs in a more fair manner. This is real-life learning that will serve your students long past your graphing unit. It's a crucial life skill that is often not taught in school.

Here’s a real-life math lesson that will be a great addition to your middle school graphing unit!

Students are shown three unique and realistic graphs Each one presents information in a biased or misleading way.

With step-by-step instructions, your students will be guided through the basics:

1) Carefully reading and interpreting each graph: the axes, the scales, the data that is included

2) Noticing any biases or manipulations that may be present

3) Determining what the author probably wanted to guide them to think when reading the initial graph

On the second page for each situation, students are given extra information and tasked with re-creating the graph more fairly.

Blank graphs (with scales and labels) are given to students; they will use the information provided in each table to create a new graph that displays the data in an accurate way. Reflection prompt questions are also included to stimulate discussion and students explaining their ideas in words.

The misleading and biased scenarios include:

• Choosing a truncated vertical scale to overemphasize change

• Not plotting enough data points for the full picture

• Graphing an absolute amount when a rate would be more informative

The three graphs include one bar graph and two line graphs.

What's Included:

8 Page PDF Ready to Print and Use!

• Teacher Instructions

• 6 Worksheets: Two Pages each for Three Scenarios (including 15 questions and 3 graphs for students to create)

• Complete Answer Key