Numeracy Skills

3.5. Flow Charts and Tree Diagrams

Further graphs/charts you might expect to come across include flow charts:

where the steps of a process (sometimes referred to as an ‘algorithm’) are laid out in order of the priority in which they are to be carried out.

A good way of understanding this is to think about trying different keys in a lock, in turn, in order to establish which the correct one is. The above diagram gives us a flowchart for a non-functioning lamp.

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And tree-diagrams:

which systematically lay out all the possible outcomes of a given process. The above diagram describes the first three available possible combinations of moves for a computer chess program.