My students are university science majors, and I’m trying to teach them how to read graphs, tables, and figures. They already know the vocabulary in Japanese, so the first step is in giving them corresponding vocabulary in English.  That sometimes includes the names of various graphs: line graph, bar graph (vertical and horizontal), scatter plot graph, pie chart, and the good old pictograph.

Pictographs seem a bit juvenile, or at least less scientific than the others. You can see them in newspapers and magazines more than in scientific journals probably because they are easier for the layman to interpret.

Finding examples of all of these figures and tables is pretty simple nowadays. Just go to Google Images and type in a keyword. Copy and paste at your own copyright risk. But what if you wanted to make your own? Most of them are easy enough with Excel, but what about a pictograph?  I just found a way. (more…)