Why are histograms important

What is the importance of a histogram? Sep 7, Explanation: Without needing to have a good graphing program, plotting a histogram can give you a quick visualization of your data distribution.

Related questions How can the bin width affect the shape of a histogram? How do you create a histogram from a frequency table? Start by tracking the defects on the check sheet. The tool will create a histogram using the data you enter. A common pattern is the bell-shaped curve known as the "normal distribution. Note that other distributions look similar to the normal distribution. Statistical calculations must be used to prove a normal distribution.

It's important to note that "normal" refers to the typical distribution for a particular process. For example, many processes have a natural limit on one side and will produce skewed distributions.

The skewed distribution is asymmetrical because a natural limit prevents outcomes on one side. For example, a distribution of analyses of a very pure product would be skewed, because the product cannot be more than percent pure. There are several common types of histograms, based on data distribution. Histograms have many benefits, but there are two weaknesses.

A histogram can present data that is misleading. For example, using too many blocks can make analysis difficult, while too few can leave out important data. Histograms are based on two sets of data, but to analyze certain types of statistical data, more than two sets of data are necessary. For example, the blocks may denote the number of months in a year and the vertical line, the number of students attending college each month. Stephen Benham has been writing since His current articles appear on various websites.

Benham has worked as an insurance research writer for Axco Services, producing reports in many countries. We investigate this important point in the next example.

We used the same set of data to construct these three histograms of student scores. Are you surprised by how different the distribution looks in each histogram? The histogram on the left has a bin width of The first bin starts at To create the middle histogram, we changed the bin width to 10 but kept the first bin starting at To create the last histogram, we kept the bin width at 10 but started the first bin at These changes affect our description of the shape, center, and spread of this set of data.