Sales Graph

The graphs we’ve discussed so far are called line graphs, because they show a relationship between two variables: one measured on the horizontal axis and the other measured on the vertical axis.

Sometimes it’s useful to show more than one set of data on the same axes. The data in the table, below, is displayed in Figure 1, which shows the relationship between two variables: length and median weight for American baby boys and girls during the first three years of life.

(The median means that half of all babies weigh more than this and half weigh less.) The line graph measures length in inches on the horizontal axis and weight in pounds on the vertical axis. For example, point A on the figure shows that a boy who is 28 inches long will have a median weight of about 19 pounds. One line on the graph shows the length-weight relationship for boys, and the other line shows the relationship for girls. This kind of graph is widely used by health-care providers to check whether a child’s physical development is roughly on track.

• Not all relationships in economics are linear. Sometimes they are curves. Figure 2, below, presents another example of a line graph, representing the data from the table underneath.
• In this case, the line graph shows how thin the air becomes when you climb a mountain. The horizontal axis of the figure shows altitude, measured in meters above sea level.
• The vertical axis measures the density of the air at each altitude. Air density is measured by the weight of the air in a cubic meter of space (that is, a box measuring one meter in height, width, and depth).
• As the graph shows, air pressure is heaviest at ground level and becomes lighter as you climb. Figure 1 shows that a cubic meter of air at an altitude of 500 meters weighs approximately one kilogram (about 2.2 pounds).

However, as the altitude increases, air density decreases. A cubic meter of air at the top of Mount Everest, at about 8,828 meters, would weigh only 0.023 kilograms. The thin air at high altitudes explains why many mountain climbers need to use oxygen tanks as they reach the top of a mountain.

Time series

One common line graph is called a time series, in which the horizontal axis shows time and the vertical axis displays another variable. Thus, a time-series graph shows how a variable changes over time. Figure 3 shows the unemployment rate in the United States since 1975, where unemployment is defined as the percentage of adults who want jobs and are looking for a job, but cannot find one. The points for the unemployment rate in each year are plotted on the graph, and a line then connects the points, showing how the unemployment rate has moved up and down since 1975. With a graph like this, it is easy to spot the times of high unemployment and of low unemployment.