Now is the time for a short computer lab activity to get us in the mood for some analytical ball game watching and playing. The computing skills learned and used during this procedure are, of course, incidental to the anticipation of real ball playing. On each screen is the clear ball field pictured below. Immediately every student marks the track of that hit on the ball field graphic, the statistician records the play, the announcer congratulates, and we move on to the next hitter. This process is repeated as often as everyone can stand it or the announcer's repartee is used up.
Charts do give a quick impression of the data.
Be ready at this stage for spreadsheet novices to be intrigued by the automatic recalculation of totals as each new number is entered. Clicking on any box will immediately display the one of the various charts which can be made from this same original data. Discuss which graph or chart type would be most useful for the demonstration at hand. The usual choices are the bar graph version and the pie chart version shown here. Notice that the bar chart shows distribution and accurate value whereas the pie chart shows only distribution.