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Histogram

A histogram is a bar graph that represents the frequency distribution of continuous data by splitting it into intervals or bins. The width of each bar represents the interval and the height represents the frequency of observations within that interval. Histograms allow inspection of the underlying distribution shape of a continuous data set and detection of outliers. To construct a histogram, continuous data is divided into bins and each bin contains the number of observations within its interval. The area, not the height, of each bar indicates the frequency for that bin. Histograms differ from bar charts in that they are specifically used to plot frequencies of continuous data divided into bins.

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181 views6 pages

Histogram

A histogram is a bar graph that represents the frequency distribution of continuous data by splitting it into intervals or bins. The width of each bar represents the interval and the height represents the frequency of observations within that interval. Histograms allow inspection of the underlying distribution shape of a continuous data set and detection of outliers. To construct a histogram, continuous data is divided into bins and each bin contains the number of observations within its interval. The area, not the height, of each bar indicates the frequency for that bin. Histograms differ from bar charts in that they are specifically used to plot frequencies of continuous data divided into bins.

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lap
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What is a histogram?

A histogram is a bar graph that represents a frequency distribution. The


width represents the interval (bins) and the height represents the
corresponding frequency (mode). There are no spaces between the
bars.

A histogram is a plot that lets you discover, and show, the underlying
frequency distribution (shape) of a set of continuous data. This allows
the inspection of the data for its underlying distribution (e.g., normal
distribution), outliers, skewness, etc.

How do you construct a histogram from a continuous


variable?
To construct a histogram from a continuous variable you first need to
split the data into intervals, called bins. In the example above, age has
been split into bins, with each bin representing a 5-year period starting at
10 miles. Each bin contains the number of occurrences of scores in the
data set that are contained within that bin. Notice that, unlike a bar chart,
there are no "gaps" between the bars (although some bars might be
"absent" reflecting no frequencies). This is because a histogram
represents a continuous data set, and as such, there are no gaps in the
data (although you will have to decide whether you round up or round
down scores on the boundaries of bins).

Histograms are based on area, not height of bars


In a histogram, it is the area of the bar that indicates the frequency of
occurrences for each bin. This means that the height of the bar does not
necessarily indicate how many occurrences of scores there were within
each individual bin. It is the product of height multiplied by the width of
the bin that indicates the frequency of occurrences within that bin. One
of the reasons that the height of the bars is often incorrectly assessed as
indicating frequency and not the area of the bar is due to the fact that a
lot of histograms often have equally spaced bars (bins), and under these
circumstances, the height of the bin does reflect the frequency.

What is the difference between a bar chart and a


histogram?
The major difference is that a histogram is only used to plot the
frequency of score occurrences in a continuous data set that has been
divided into classes, called bins. Bar charts, on the other hand, can be
used for a great deal of other types of variables including ordinal and
nominal data sets.

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