Discussion 2 (DTDW23)

[Liz Lewis]

• Which type of graph do you think is best for showing Flores del Mundo’s membership trends over the course of the year?

• Does your answer change if you’re graphing total membership versus employee/spouse/dependent?

• Does your answer change if you want to show Eastern and Northern on the same graph?

[Rachel Bedenbaugh]

1. I would think a line graph best show membership trends over the course of the year.
2. I might change to a bar graph with Membership on the Y axis & Employee/Spouse/Child & months on the x axis with time broken out by quarters so there are only 4 timepoints.
3. I would go back to a line graph if I am comparing total membership trends between Eastern & Western

[Tomeka Frieson]

1. I agree that the line graph would be best to show membership trends over the course of the year, as this graph features overall trends and patterns.
2. Yes, my answer would change because if I’m graphing trends for employees, spouses, and dependents, a line graph might get too visually unwieldy. I would, instead, use a vertical bar graph, where each point in time would be associated with 3 differently colored bars, representing Employee, Spouse, and Child. I like Rachel’s suggestion above to use quarters as the “points in time” since Flores del Mundo’s data will be collected, eventually, over many years, and you don’t want the graph to get too unwieldy.
3. Yes, my answer would again change. Just showing Eastern and Northern on the same graph would not make the line graph too visually unwieldy, so I could go back to using a line graph to depict the data and show overall trends over time.

[Keianna Lopes]

1. Personally I feel like trends over time are most of the time best scene as line graphs. This allows people looking at the graphs to clearly interpret positive and negative difference month to month.
2. If I was given the opion I would likely separate employee, spouses, and children into three diffent graphs so that I could use line graphs unless there was a reason to compare memberships of employees over time vs spouse/ children.
3. I would maintain my graph choice if comparing Eastern and Northern. I would actually argue that I may not need to split up employee, spouses and children until we are comparing Eastern and Northern.

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