5 exercises — in incident updates, post-mortems, and quarterly reviews, precise trend vocabulary replaces vague phrases like "it was high" or "it changed".
Spike:spiked briefly (sharp rise + recovery); surged and remained elevated (no recovery)
Stable:stable / flat / holding steady / fluctuating within a narrow range
Continuous growth:growing continuously / climbing without recovery → memory leak signal
0 / 10 completed
1 / 10
A Grafana dashboard shows CPU utilisation going from 22% to 91% in under two minutes, starting at 03:14 UTC during a production deployment. How should an on-call engineer describe this in an incident update?
"Rose sharply" is the correct phrasing for a rapid, steep increase. Key vocabulary for upward trends:
• rose / increased / climbed sharply / steeply / rapidly — fast upward movement • rose gradually / slowly / steadily — slow, consistent upward movement • surged — sudden dramatic spike (often implies a problem) • peaked at X% — reached the highest point
Distractors: "decreased gradually" is the opposite. "Leveled off" means it stabilised (flat line). "Fluctuated" means it went up and down repeatedly — not a single spike.
In incident write-ups: precise direction + speed vocabulary (rose sharply, dropped suddenly, spiked briefly, climbed steadily) makes timeline reconstruction much faster in post-mortems. Vague language like "CPU was high" loses the timing and rate information that is critical for root cause analysis.
2 / 10
A monitoring chart shows the error rate at 0.08% for 6 hours. At 14:32, it jumps suddenly to 5.4%, then returns to 0.09% within 4 minutes — coinciding with a canary deployment that was automatically rolled back. Which description is most accurate?
"Spiked briefly before returning to baseline" captures both elements: sudden high peak + rapid return to normal. Key vocabulary:
• spiked — sudden sharp increase and return (like a spike on a graph); implies transient • briefly — for a short time (4 minutes) • returned to baseline — went back to the normal / expected level • baseline — the normal/expected value under typical conditions
Distractors: "surged and remained elevated" implies it stayed high — not true here (it came back down). "dropped sharply" is the wrong direction. "gradually increased" is wrong direction and wrong speed.
More precise alternatives: "The error rate spiked to 5.4% at 14:32 for approximately 4 minutes before the canary rollback restored it to baseline." This is the standard post-mortem phrasing: spike time, peak value, duration, and recovery mechanism.
3 / 10
A performance review shows API response latency (p99) over the past two weeks: the numbers are 448ms, 451ms, 452ms, 449ms, 453ms — varying by a few milliseconds each day with no clear trend. How would you describe this trend in a weekly report?
"Broadly stable / fluctuating within a narrow range" — both parts of this description are accurate and precise. Vocabulary for flat / stable trends:
• stable / broadly stable — no meaningful change • flat — completely unchanged (or nearly so) • fluctuating within a narrow range — small variations but no trend • holding steady at X — staying at approximately the same value • showing no significant trend — statistical language for no upward or downward movement
Distractors: "increased dramatically" and "degrading rapidly" are dangerous overstatements — a 5ms variation on 450ms baseline is normal noise, not a trend. In SRE communication, precision matters enormously: falsely alerting the team to a "dramatic increase" erodes trust and causes alert fatigue. "Dropped significantly" is factually wrong.
4 / 10
Active user data over four months: January: 10,200 DAU — February: 11,800 DAU — March: 13,400 DAU — April: 15,100 DAU. How would you describe this to the product team in a quarterly review?
"Growing steadily — up approximately 48% over four months" — the best answer combines direction vocabulary with a quantified magnitude. Key vocabulary for consistent upward trends:
• growing steadily / consistently — continuous, reliable growth • increasing month over month (MoM) — growing each consecutive period • up X% over the period — quantified with percentage change • trending upward — clear positive direction • showing healthy growth — positive framing for stakector reports
Distractors: "fluctuating wildly" — wrong, the numbers go up consistently. "dropped sharply" — factually wrong. "peaked and plateau" — speculation, not supported by the data given.
Best practice: Always include both the qualitative trend description ("growing steadily") and the quantitative measure ("up 48%") for maximum clarity in business communication.
5 / 10
A DevOps engineer monitors heap memory for a service that has been running for 24 hours without a restart: at 00:00 it was 1.8 GB, at 06:00 — 2.9 GB, at 12:00 — 4.1 GB, at 18:00 — 5.4 GB, at 24:00 — 6.8 GB. How should the engineer describe this pattern in a bug report?
"Growing continuously — consistent with a memory leak" — the trend is a classic linear/monotonic increase with no recovery, which is the hallmark of a memory leak. Key vocabulary:
• growing continuously / climbing steadily without recovery — the defining pattern of a leak • memory leak — a defect where memory is allocated but never released, causing progressive memory exhaustion • unbounded growth — a system metric that increases without an upper limit • OOM (Out of Memory) — the eventual crash when heap is exhausted • heap exhaustion — when the JVM/process runs out of heap memory
Contrast with normal patterns: • Saw-tooth pattern: memory rises then drops sharply → normal GC cycles • Spike then recovery: temporary high memory under load that returns to baseline → normal • Step increase then stable: one-time increase + stable → possibly a cache fill, not a leak
The pattern here (1.8 → 2.9 → 4.1 → 5.4 → 6.8 GB, +1–1.3 GB every 6h) = linear growth with no recovery = almost certainly a memory leak.
6 / 10
Sarah, a SRE, is drafting a Slack message to the team about an anomaly detected by Prometheus. The metric is 'database_connections' for the primary application server. It spiked from an average of 120 over the last hour to 850 in the last 5 minutes. Which description best reflects this situation?
Insufficient: Option A downplays the severity. The large spike warrants immediate attention. Option B correctly identifies a significant and unexpected increase in database connections, which is what needs to be communicated urgently. Options C and D misrepresent the nature of the data – spikes are not simply 'steady increases' or 'background noise'.
7 / 10
Mark, a developer, is writing a PR description for a change that reduces the response time of a microservice. The API response latency (p95) has decreased from 2.1 seconds to 0.8 seconds after implementing caching. Which phrase accurately describes this improvement?
Insufficient: Option A is too absolute – 'consistently low' doesn't reflect the p95 metric. Option B accurately describes the reduction in latency using appropriate terminology (p95). Options C and D are overly enthusiastic or vague; focusing on a single percentile provides more precise information about performance.
8 / 10
During a daily standup, Alex, a DevOps engineer, is explaining an issue with server CPU usage. The CPU utilization has been steadily increasing from 15% to 98% over the past hour, starting at 09:00 UTC. Which statement best summarizes this trend?
Insufficient: Option A ignores the increasing trend. Option C describes a 'spike', which isn't what happened; it was a gradual increase. Option D misrepresents the severity of the situation – 98% CPU utilization is far from 'generally good'. Option B accurately describes the steady rise in CPU load, essential for conveying the urgency.
9 / 10
Emily, a data analyst, is preparing a quarterly report on website traffic. The number of monthly active users (MAU) has increased from 50,000 in January to 75,000 in March and then to 92,000 in April. How should she describe this trend?
Insufficient: Option A is incorrect; it describes a decline, not growth. Option C contains an inaccurate statement about the data. Option D doesn't reflect the increasing trend. Option B correctly identifies that MAU has been consistently growing over the three-month period – using 'positive' is key here.
10 / 10
David, a junior developer, is writing a bug report about a service experiencing high memory consumption. The heap memory usage has steadily increased over the last 8 hours, starting at 500MB and now reaching 3GB. Which description accurately captures this issue?
Insufficient: Option A ignores the increasing trend. Option C suggests a 'critical error,' which might be premature without further investigation. Option D doesn't accurately describe the steady increase in memory usage. Option B correctly describes a gradual increase, providing the necessary detail for someone to understand the problem.
What will I practise in "Describing Graph Trends in IT English"?
This module focuses on Numbers, Data & Metrics — real workplace phrasing you'll use on the job. It contains 10 scenario-based multiple-choice questions with instant feedback.
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How many questions does this exercise have?
This module includes 10 questions. Each one gives an immediate right/wrong result plus a full explanation of the correct phrasing.
What happens if I answer a question incorrectly?
You'll see the correct answer highlighted straight away, along with a plain-English explanation of why it's right and why the other options don't fit — mistakes are part of the learning here.
Can I retry the exercise if I want a better score?
Yes — use the 'Try again' button on the results screen to reset your score and go through the questions again. There's no limit on attempts.
Who is this Numbers, Data & Metrics exercise for?
It's aimed at IT professionals with working English who want to sound more natural and precise around numbers, data & metrics — useful whether you're preparing for real conversations at work or just building confidence with the vocabulary.
Do I need an account to track my progress?
No account is needed. Your progress through the exercise is tracked locally in your browser for the current session, and you can replay the module at any time.
How is this different from reading a blog article?
This exercise is an interactive drill that tests and reinforces specific phrasing through multiple-choice questions with instant feedback, while blog articles explain concepts and vocabulary in prose. The two work well together.
Where can I find more Numbers, Data & Metrics exercises?
See the Numbers, Data & Metrics hub for more modules like this one, or browse the full Exercises page for other IT-English topics.
Can I complete this exercise on my phone?
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