The world around us is organized into different levels. Let’s look at an example.

You live in a community. The community is made up of houses, apartment complexes, and offices close around you.

Source: Neighborhood Map, Baldwin Park Homeowners Association

Several communities make up a city or a town.

Source: Round Rock Texas Aerial Photo, Landsat.com

The cities and towns close to each other make up a county. There are 254 different counties in Texas.

Source: Texas County Map, Texas Petroleum Services

The 254 counties make up the state of Texas.

Source: Texas Map, Enchanted Learning

The state of Texas along with the other 49 states, territories, and Washington D.C. make up a country, the United States of America.

Source: National Association of State Energy Officials, State Energy Map

These levels of organization can be shown graphically in several ways. One way is to use nested circles like the image displayed below.

The levels of organization could also be shown in a pyramid form.

A series of arrows could also be used to show the levels of organization.

All of these graphical representations show that there is a hierarchy of organization, and each successive level is more complex than the level below it.