Histogram

A histogram is a bar chart for continuous data. The range of values is divided into equal-width intervals (bins), and the height of each bar shows how many observations land in that bin. Bars touch to signal that the axis is a continuous scale.

Why it matters

Histograms reveal the shape of data: whether it is symmetric, skewed, has several peaks or contains outliers. That shape guides which summary statistics make sense, since the mean misleads on skewed data. They are routine in performance analysis, for example showing response time distributions where a long tail of slow requests hides behind a good average. The bin width changes the picture, so try more than one.

Example

Response times (ms), bin width 100:
0-100    ##########  (50)
100-200  ######      (30)
200-300  ##          (10)
300-400  #           (5)
900-1000 #           (5)   <- slow tail

The average looks fine, but the histogram exposes the 5 slow requests.

Common mistakes

• Using too few or too many bins, hiding patterns or showing noise.
• Confusing it with a bar chart of categories.
• Comparing histograms with different bin widths or axes.

Related

• Standard deviation
• Median vs mean
• Outlier
• Data analytics

यह पेज सामान्य जानकारी है, जिसे हमारी संपादकीय टीम ने लिखा है और दस्तावेज़ीकरण बदलने पर अपडेट किया जाता है। सर्वर और प्रदाता अलग-अलग होते हैं, इसलिए बदलाव पहले सुरक्षित तरीके से जाँचें। देखें: संपादकीय नीति और अस्वीकरण.