Question

A zoo has categorized its visitors into three categories: member, school, and general. The member category refers to visitors who pay an annual fee to support the zoo. Members receive certain benefits such as discounts on merchandise and trips planned by the zoo. The school category includes faculty and students from day care and elementary and secondary schools; these visitors generally receive a discounted rate. The general category includes all other visitors. The zoo has been concerned about a recent drop in attendance. To help better understand attendance and membership, a zoo staff member has collected the following data in the DATAfile Zoo.

1. Construct a bar chart of total attendance over time. Comment on any trend in the data.
2. Construct a side-by-side bar chart showing attendance by visitor category with year as the variable on the horizontal axis.
3. Comment on what is happening to zoo attendance based on the charts from parts (a) and (b).

	Attendance
Visitor Category	2011	2012	2013	2014
General	153,713	158,704	163,433	169,106
Member	115,523	104,795	98,437	81,217
School	82,885	79,876	81,970	81,290
Total	352,121	343,375	343,840	331,613

Answer 1

a. bar chart showing total attendance over time.

From the above table we find that the total zoo attendance decreases from 352.121 to 343,375 between 2011--2012 and slightly rises to 343,840 in 2013 and again decreases to 331,613 in 2014. This indicates the zoo attendance first decreases and then increases.

b) The column bar chart showing attendance of visitors category in each year is shown in the following side by side bar chart:

c) The both charts in a) and b) shows that while the total zoo attendance decreases in first year then increases in second year, the attendance in general visitor's category increases in all the years but attendance in member and school visitor's category continuously fall in all the years.