TALLY

Arithmetic Grade Five

Lesson One hundred and sixty-one: Pictographs

If you want to know what the most popular flavor of ice cream is for some group of people you might ask them one by one and keep a tally of their answers. Each time you get a response, you would mark down that response on your tally sheet. You might set up your tally sheet and record the responses like this:

FLAVOR	TALLY	TOTAL
vanilla		12
chocolate		9
strawberry		17
chocolate chip		8
triple chocolate chip		28

From this tally we can see that the favorite flavor of ice cream was triple chocolate chip and the least popular flavor was chocolate chip. We can also answer question such as the following:


  1) How many more people picked strawberry as their favorite than chocolate?
     ANSWER: 17 - 9 = 8

  2) How many more people picked triple chocolate than vanilla?
     ANSWER: 28 - 12 = 16

  3) How many people in all selected vanilla, strawberry, or chocolate?
     ANSWER: 12 + 17 + 9 = 38

Let's say you want to know what the favorite colors for all the people you know are. You could keep track of this using a tally.

COLOR	TALLY	TOTAL
blue		21
red		12
yellow		14
purple		18
orange		16

From this tally we can see that blue was the most popular color and that red was the least popular color. We could also ask questions about our tally such as the following questions:


  1) How many more people picked blue as their favorite than purple?
     ANSWER: 21 - 18 = 3

  2) How many more people picked orange than red?
     ANSWER: 16 - 12 = 4

  3) How many people in all selected red, yellow, or orange?
     ANSWER: 12 + 14 + 16 = 42

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