Billboard Top 10s for Taylor Swift and the Beatles

Billboard Top 10s for Taylor Swift and the Beatles (+ elementary version)
graph from the New York Times (Joe Coscarelli, Courtney Cox, Fred Bierman) and Jenna Laib; slow reveal by Jenna Laib

(Slide Deck — elementary school school version — includes notes and questions to elicit discourse)
(Slide Deck — middle school version — includes notes and questions to elicit discourse, with box plots)

Type of Graph: line plot/dot plot

Visualization Source: Coscarelli, J., Courtney, C., and Bierman, F. (2024). “How Big Is Taylor Swift? As big as the Beatles? Michael Jackson? Beyoncé? We crunched the numbers.” New York Times: May 20, 2024.

Data Source: Billboard. Hits are plotted on the year in which they first peaked on the Billboard Hot 100.

Potential Math Content: dot plot/line plot, statistics, shape of data, clusters, data collection methodology

Potential Content Connections: pop culture, music

Paired Texts:

• Coscarelli, J., Courtney, C., and Bierman, F. (2024). “How Big Is Taylor Swift? As big as the Beatles? Michael Jackson? Beyoncé? We crunched the numbers.” New York Times: May 20, 2024.