Success?

Ok, so the lesson on reading graphs in the book was boring, I knew it and more importantly the learners knew it. So, to liven it up, I brought in my spreadsheet that I keep track of my utilities every month for my house.

In it, I have my gas therms, my KWH (Kilo Watt Hours) and water by 100’s of gallons, and then dollars per day. Four graphs, a combination of bar graph and histogram, with real data for the last 9 years of living in my house and graphs for the last seven years.

Here is one of the four graphs. I told the learners upfront that this was the data for my house, and I explained how I did it. The first asked things like, “how much time does it take to do this?” Answer is 1 minute a month, and about 5 minutes every year to start the data and set the colors for the new year.

Then we started talking about the usage graphs. What months do I use more water (summer), what months do I use more electricity (summer) what months do I use more gas (winter). Then, what months do I spend more? that graph is above. Obviously, winter. From this they determined that gas is much more expensive that water or electricity.

Was it successful? I think so. The learners definitely were into talking and asking questions about the graphs. The February water graph has a broken pipe, so there are interesting things to talk about. Would I do it again? Absolutely.

More graphs below the fold (lets see if this works!) I did lose some formatting in changing from excel to openoffice.