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You are what you eat!

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Do boys and girls eat breakfast differently?

To describe the breakfasts of a group of people, we can use a bar graph like the one below:

This graph is incomplete because we do not know which group of people it represents.

Where can we add this information?

What other information should be added to this graph?

Based on data for the class, let's create bar graphs to represent the breakfasts of the following groups of students:

1. the girls;
2. the boys;
3. those who walk or ride their bikes to school;
4. those who use a form of motorized transportation to get to school;
5. those who prefer physical education;
6. those who prefer another subject than physical education.

(You can divide the class into six teams and share creating the graphs between the teams.)

Are there types of food that are more popular than others? Are these the same for all of the groups? What differences do you see when you compare the graphs?

If a child of your age, in another class at school, ate a muffin, banana and glass of milk for breakfast, to which group of students would he most likely belong? Can you be sure of this?

Contributed by France Caron, Université de Montréal and Linda Gattuso, Université du Québec à Montréal.