Data Handling and Presentation | Mathematics Grade 6 CBSE

Play with it

Six steps from facts to picture

Data handling is a journey: gather, organise, show, and read. Tap each term to see where it fits in the journey.

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The three big ideas

Data is information collected for a purpose – like asking everyone in class their favourite sport.
Tally marks record counts quickly: one stroke per item, and every fifth stroke crosses the previous four to make a tidy bundle of 5.
A frequency table lists each category beside its count (its frequency), turning a jumble of answers into neat rows.
Organising first makes the data easy to read – you can already see the largest and smallest counts before drawing anything.

Common mistake: forgetting to cross the fifth tally. Strokes drawn as |||| ||||| without bundles are slow and easy to miscount – bundle every five.

A pictograph shows data with repeated symbols. A key tells you the value of one symbol, e.g. "🍎 = 5 students". Half a symbol means half the value.
A bar graph shows data as bars. All bars have the same width with equal gaps; only their length changes to show the value.
Choose a sensible scale (e.g. 1 unit = 2 students) so the graph fits the page and is easy to read.
Always add a title and labels so a reader knows what the graph is about.

Worked example. In a pictograph, 🍎 = 5 students. 20 students chose apples. How many apple symbols are drawn?

Step 1. Number of symbols = total ÷ value of one symbol.

Step 2. = 20 ÷ 5 = 4 symbols.

Step 3. Check: 4 symbols × 5 = 20 students. ✓

To read a graph, first check the title, labels and scale – they tell you what each bar or symbol means.
The tallest bar / most symbols is the largest value; the shortest is the smallest. Compare lengths to answer "which is more?".
You can also work out totals and differences: add all the bars for a grand total, or subtract two bars to find the gap between them.

Worked example. A bar graph of pets shows dogs 8, cats 5, fish 3, birds 4. How many more dogs than fish, and how many pets in all?

Step 1. More dogs than fish: 8 − 3 = 5.

Step 2. Total pets: 8 + 5 + 3 + 4 = 20.

Step 3. Most popular = dogs (tallest bar); least = fish (shortest bar).

Common mistake: ignoring the scale. If 1 unit = 2 students, a bar reaching the "4" line means 8 students, not 4 – always multiply by the scale.

Where you'll meet it

Data at work

Cricket & sports scores

Run-rate charts and player comparison bars on a sports app are bar graphs. One glance tells you who scored most this season – far faster than reading a long list of numbers.

Weather & rainfall

Monthly rainfall is shown as bars so farmers and planners can see which months are wettest. The picture reveals the monsoon pattern at a glance.

Class & village surveys

A survey of how children travel to school, or which crops a village grows, is tallied and drawn as a pictograph – turning everyone's answers into one clear, shareable picture.

Check yourself

Competency quiz

Modelled on the competency-based pattern — MCQ, assertion–reason and case studies, testing whether you can use the ideas, not just recall them.

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