When solving problems, there are many ways to use representations to explore problem situations.
 

The drawing helps you to see that the cookie will be divided into thirds.
Each girl will get 1/3.

The tally helps Mae to record
the data.
She can easily see that the favorite flavor is vanilla.
It received 2 more votes than chocolate.

Liz began by laying out two unit
blocks for each of the 8 guests.
She could exchange 10 ones for 1 ten. In this way she saw she needed 16 balloons for the party.
 

Laura found that 5 states were visited most often.
She wanted to show this information
in a bar graph.

Remember:  You can show the work from a problem in many ways.