Effects of Tables, Bar Charts, and Graphs on Solving Function Tasks

This paper presents an experiment that investigated the effect of forms of representation on students' quantitative and qualitative reasoning on functions. The forms of representation we used were tables, augmented bar charts, and graphs. Research assumes that tables are more suitable for quantitative reasoning whereas graphs should be used for qualitative reasoning. The empirical results of the experiment indeed showed that tables and augmented bar charts were in general more suitable for quantitative reasoning than graphs. Concerning qualitative reasoning the results depended on how thoroughly the graph had to be inspected. If the task-relevant visual feature of the graph could be perceived with a glimpse, a graph was overall more suitable for qualitative reasoning than a table or an augmented bar chart. If the task-relevant visual feature could be identified solely after a thorough inspection of the graph's shape, a table was generally more efficient for qualitative reasoning than an augmented bar chart or a graph.