Story Graphs

The term "story graph" is usually applied to graphs that are composed of several line segments ( or curves) that represent what occurs during the time frame of a story.
You will learn in future courses that graphs of this nature are called piece-wise defined functions or split-definition functions.


bullet Drawing a Graph to Tell a "Story":

STORY: In a half hour time frame, Grandpa Joe walks for 10 minutes, rests for 5 minutes, jogs for 10 minutes, and rests for 5 minutes. Grandpa Joe will walk less than one mile during this time.

Produce a graph that could represent the distance traveled by Grandpa Joe over the 30 minute time period.

Notice:
• a horizontal segment = resting (no distance traveled)
• walking is slower than jogging
storygraph
• the slope (rate of change) when walking is less than the slope (rate of change) when jogging
• in the 30 minutes, Grandpa Joe did not quite travel one mile.

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bullet Telling a "Story" About a Graph:

m&mgrAPH

Given the graph at the left, write a story that could describe what is happening as displayed by the graph.

POSSIBLE STORY: John is steadily eating from a large bag of M&M candies for nearly 2 minutes, then stops to tweet a message, then finishes off the bag of candies.

Of course, there are other possible stories.

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