Reading and understanding tables

You probably recognise the times tables. In each of the white squares, there is the result of a calculation. What is 2 times 7? We find 2 in the row at the top. Then we follow the column downwards until we reach the row that is 7.

And there we find the answer. 2 times 7 is 14. This is how a table works. Each box, that is each position of the table, gets its explanation from what is written in the row at the top, and in the column to the left. Let’s have a look at another type of table.

At first glance, this might look like a mess of digits and numbers. Can we make sense of it? The title says “Population by town and year”. So, the numbers in the table state the population in some made-up towns during certain years. The column to the left tells us what towns they are.

The row along the top tells us the years: 2014 to 2018. Now, let’s answer a few questions by studying the table. First question: How many people lived in the town of Mount Michael in 2017? Let’s do what we did with the times tables. We’ll find the right row and the right column.

Mount Michael is … here! Good, so we are looking for a number on the “Mount Michael row”. Now we need to find the right year, 2017. There! Each number in this column gives a population size in the year 2017.

And the row Mount Michael crosses the column 2017 … there! The answer to the question is that 150,134 people lived in Mount Michael in 2017. This is the basis for reading tables. Find the right row and the right column, and see where they meet. Here’s another, perhaps slightly trickier, question: How many more inhabitants were there in Westville in 2018 compared to 2017?

Let’s see, we need to know how many people lived in Westville in the years 2018 and 2017. Pause the film now and see if you can find out. Note the values. Then start the film again. The row Westville is here.

We find the columns 2018 and 2017, and we mark them too. And we see that in 2018, Westville had 141,676 inhabitants. In 2017, Westville had 140,927 inhabitants. And what was the question we wanted to answer? Oh yes, how many more people lived in Westville in 2018 compared to 2017?

So, we calculate 141,676 minus 140,927. The answer is 749. In 2018 there were 749 more inhabitants in Westville compared to 2017. The number 749 is not written anywhere in the table, right? But we used the numbers written in the table to calculate the answer to the question asked.

This is often the case with tables. They can tell us a lot more than what is written on the page. Did any town reduce its population during the years shown in the table? Perhaps? Pause the film and find out.

Whatever row we look at, the numbers grow larger the further to the right we read. We’ll just pick one row now, and it’s the same for all rows. So, the population of all the towns increased during these years. The answer to the question is: No, none of the towns reduced their populations between the years 2014 and 2018. This information is not written anywhere in the table.

It is a conclusion we can draw when we study the values written. So, the basis for understanding a table is to find the right row and the right column and see where they cross. And if you understand how to read a table, you can draw many different conclusions, beyond what is written in the table.