Let’s review: we can measure items using a ruler to the nearest ½ inch and the nearest whole inch. Using the blue highlighter, we can se the halves for each whole section of the ruler. The way our measurements are listed on a ruler is the same way we list our measurements on a line plot! When we remove part of the ruler’s outline, it looks just like our horizontal line on a line plot!

Shoe Size Number of students 5 inches 3 students 7 inches 8 students 3 students lll 7 inches 8 students llll lll 9 inches 6 students llll l Students were asked to measure their shoe size. We can see the measurements listed in the table. There are 3 students who have shoes that are 5 inches long. There are 8 students who have shoes that are 7 inches long. There are 6 students who have shoes that are 9 inches long. We can also see the number of students listed in the table using tally marks. Using tally marks when gathering data is a great way to keep track of how many!

Shoe Size Number of Students 8 3 4 5 6 7 5 6 7 8 9 Shoe Size 5 inches 3 students 7 inches 8 students 9 inches 6 students 8 3 4 5 6 7 Number of Students 5 6 7 8 9 Shoe Size Students often get confused when they think about which set of data goes on the x axis, or the horizontal line for the line plot. Sometimes students think that we should put the number of students on the number line and then plot the data for the shoe size. If we do this, how would we plot the shoe size? Can we tell how many times the number of students happened? Instead, we should put the shoe size as our x-axis, and then we can plot our data for the number of students! We can tell how many times the shoe size happened!

Shoe Size Number of students 5 inches 3 students lll 7 inches 8 students llll lll 9 inches 6 students llll l Now that we have our data, let’s draw our line plot. Remember, we begin with our horizontal line. Starting with the lowest data point 5 inches, we will label our horizontal axis with the number 5. Our largest number is 9 inches so we know that our horizontal axis needs to extend from the number 5 to 9. Let’s go ahead and label our whole numbers on the number line from 5 to 9. Even though we do not have data for each one of our whole numbers we are listing, we still need to list them all to show our measurement data! Now that our line plot is ready, let’s add the data from the table. We know that 3 students have shoes that measured 5 inches. We find the 5 inch mark on our line plot and add an “x” to represent one student. We add another “X” to represent the second student. One more “X” to represent the 3rd student. Looking at the line plot, we see three X’s over the number 5 to show us that 3 students have shoes that measured 5 inches. Let’s go to the next piece of data in the table. We see that there are 8 students who have shoes that measured 7 inches. We find the number 7 on the line plot and add an “X” to represent one student. How many more X’s do we need to add here? Our table said there are 8 students and we have marked the X for only one. That leaves 7 more! (show 7 more X’s being added). We put the x’s one on top of the other to show how many students for that number. Now that we have all 8 students represented on the line plot, let’s look at our final piece of data from the table. We see that there are 6 students who have shoes that measured 9 inches. We find the number 9 on the line plot an add our X to represent one student. How many more X’s do we need to add? Yes! We need to add 5 more. (show 5 more x’s being added) We add 5 more x’s so that we have a total of 6 x’s to represent the 6 students with shoes that measured 9 inches. Notice that the numbers 6 and 8 do not have any x’s listed. We did not have any students whose shoes measured 6 inches or 8 inches. If we do not have any data to plot, we leave it blank. Which group has the most? (the group whose shoes measured 7 inches) how do we know? (because there are 8 “x’s” over that measurement which is more than the group with 5 inches and more than the group with 9 inches.