Primary 4 · Statistics

P4 pie charts

A pie chart shows a whole shared into sectors. Each sector is a fraction of the whole, so your child needs the total before a sector becomes a number. In the Standard syllabus, pie charts are read in P4.

Taught in
Term 3
Syllabus
1 skill
Usual slip
Reading the slice

A pie chart of 40 pupils' favourite fruit, with a quarter for apple

What your child learns in P4 pie charts

One skill, each with what it looks like on a worksheet.

Follows the latest (2026) MOE syllabus
See the syllabus wording
  • reading and interpreting data from tables/line graphs/pie charts

Read each sector as a share

Each sector is a fraction of the whole circle, such as a quarter or a half. A right-angle mark means a quarter. The total may sit in a sentence or a table beside the chart, so your child reads both.

CategoryShareValue
apple??
banana??
mango??
pear??
Favourite fruit of 40 pupils

Key facts and formulas

Term 3
  • CategoryShareValue
    half??
    quarter??
    quarter??
    A sector is a fraction of the wholeA right-angle mark is a quarter of the circle. A straight line across the centre cuts it in half.
  • CategoryShareValue
    ???
    half??
    quarter??
    A part from the totalThe fraction × the total.a quarter of 120 → 14×120=\frac{1}{4} \times 120 = 3030
  • CategoryShareValue
    A25%18
    B??
    C??
    D??
    The total from a partA quarter is 18 pupils, so the whole circle is 4 quarters.total → 4×18=4 \times 18 = 7272

Quarters, halves and thirds

A sector's size is its share of the whole circle. A whole circle turns through 360°, so a quarter is a 90° sector, which is why it carries a right-angle mark.

CategoryShareValue
A50%1
B??
A half
CategoryShareValue
A25%1
B??
A quarter
CategoryShareValue
A75%3
B??
Three quarters
CategoryShareValue
A33%1
B??
A third

A quarter is also 25%. Your child meets percentages in P5, and the idea stays the same.

Words to know

Sector
One slice of a pie chart, from the centre to the edge.
Whole circle
Everything the chart shows, such as all 40 pupils.
The total
The number the whole circle stands for. You need it to count a sector.
Proportion
A share of the whole, not a count.
Right-angle mark
A small square at the centre. It shows the sector is exactly a quarter.
Half, quarter
A half is two quarters of the circle; three quarters leave one quarter.

The sentence that costs the mark

A pie chart shows the favourite fruit of 40 pupils. The apple sector is exactly a quarter of the circle. How many pupils chose apple?

CategoryShareValue
apple??
banana??
mango??
pear??
The right angle shows the apple sector is a quarter of all 40 pupils.

What the working usually does

readsa quarter=4

Reads the slice as the number, so a quarter becomes 4. The 40 total never gets used, and the working looks finished.

What the question asked

× 40a quarter=10

Takes a quarter of the whole: a quarter of the 40 pupils is 10. The total is what turns the share into a real count.

Both look like a finished answer, and 4 is a real number, so nothing flags as careless. A slice on a pie chart is a share of the whole, so the total has to be found before it becomes a count of pupils.

The same P4 pie charts question, worked properly

Lah works through it the way she does every question in StudyLah: one step at a time, marking the picture as she goes.

The pie chart shows the favourite sports of 160 pupils. Football and Basketball together were chosen by half of the pupils. If 22 pupils chose Swimming, how many chose Tennis?

CategoryShareValue
Football??
Tennis??
Swimming??
Basketball??
Step 1 of 4▌
  1. Read the pie chart first. The whole circle is all 160 pupils, and half of them chose Football or Basketball.
  2. That half is a share of the 160 pupils. Half of 160 is 160 ÷ 2 = 80, so Swimming and Tennis together make 80.
  3. Subtract the 22 who chose Swimming: 80 − 22 = 58.
  4. So 58 pupils chose Tennis.

Every question in StudyLah comes with a walkthrough like this one.

Try it free

Two quick P4 pie charts questions

Try them together, then tap to check.

Question 1

At a swimming pool there were 15 boys and 25 girls. The men and the women were each a quarter of the people. Find the total number of people.

CategoryShareValue
Boys??
Men??
Girls??
Women??
Show answer

Answer80. The men and women make half, so the boys and girls are the other half, 15 + 25 = 40. The total is 40 × 2 = 80.

Question 2

60 pupils chose mangoes, and twice as many chose rambutans as guavas. How many pupils chose papayas?

CategoryShareValue
mangoes??
papayas??
guavas??
rambutans??
Show answer

Answer90. Mangoes are a quarter, so the total is 4 × 60 = 240. Rambutans are 60 and guavas 30, so 240 − 150 = 90.

Helping at home

How to tell it has clicked

Ask your child to point at the whole circle and say what it stands for before reading any sector. If they can say "all 40 pupils", they know a sector is a share of that total. If they give a number without hunting for the total, the fix is one question: "a quarter of what?"

Try this tonight

Cut a pizza into quarters. Ask "how many slices is a quarter?", then "if the whole pizza fed 8 people, how many does one quarter feed?". The slice is a share; the number depends on the whole.

Before and after P4 pie charts

  1. Builds on

    Primary 3 Fractions

    Compares, simplifies, adds and subtracts fractions

  2. Builds on

    Primary 3 Bar Graphs

    Reads bar graphs with any scale

  3. You are here

    Primary 4 Pie Charts

    Reads each sector as a share

More in Primary 4

Struggling with the working rather than the topic itself? How to help your child with problem sums

See how your child is doing on this topic

StudyLah marks each step separately, so you can see whether it was the setup or the arithmetic that cost the mark.

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