The ancient Egyptians really knew how to represent their ideas in picture form. The hieroglyphics above might say TransferReady, though it probably doesn’t, to be honest.
A Pictogram can be a little more precise in this regard
A pictogram (or perhaps more accurately, pictograph, as it’s actually a form of graph) is a chart that uses pictures to represent data. Pictograms are set out in much the same way as bar charts, but instead of continuous bars to indicate quantity they use rows of pictures to show the numbers involved. The pictures will typically represent a given quantity of data units, and this quantity should be specified in a key.
Pictograms are a very common method for representing data – newspapers love them because they can often represent quite complex data sets in a format that people find very easy to understand.
Although this pictogram comparing the fortunes of the South versus the North in the US economy in 1860 doesn’t have a key, nor any real context, we can quickly understand that the North was already becoming a manufacturing powerhouse.
Pictogram questions are quite basic and your child will have been familiar with them from KS1. They become a little more challenging when the icons, or pictures, begin to represent more than one data element each. Each icon might represent 10 workers, 1000 workers or 1 million workers and this information should be provided in the key.
Most commonly, in the transfer test, the icons will represent a certain number data elements. Then half, or a quarter, of an icon can be included. Often, these will be 4, 8 or 16 to allow simple halving and quartering.
In this example, the Lakhanpal merchant supplies 550 fruit baskets [hint: five and a half icons], while Rahim supplies 400 [hint: four icons].
So, now ask your transfer child to try this worksheet of Pictogram questions and you’ll be able to work through their answers with them. Best of luck…
Pictogram Questions:
Answers:
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