Skip to Main Content

Finding Trends and Patterns


Kristin Fracchia
Lesson by Kristin Fracchia
Magoosh Expert

Summary
This lesson focuses on identifying patterns and trends in data, a skill critical for success on the ACT Science test, which constitutes about 50% of the questions.
  • Understanding how to interpret data, patterns, and trends is crucial for approximately 50% of the questions on the ACT Science test.
  • The lesson emphasizes the importance of accurately reading graphs and tables, noting that all ACT charts and graphs will be in black and white, which can affect readability.
  • Examples illustrate how to determine whether tanks are being filled, emptied, or held constant, and how to extrapolate or interpolate data points.
  • Direct and inverse variation concepts are reviewed, highlighting their application in predicting relationships between variables.
  • The process of elimination is recommended when creating or choosing graphs that accurately reflect given data, with a reminder that sometimes data may not follow a discernible pattern.
Chapters
00:00
Identifying Patterns and Trends
00:35
Interpreting Graphs and Tables
05:01
Extrapolating and Interpolating Data
05:36
Understanding Direct and Inverse Variation