Written by the Fiveable Content Team โข Last updated September 2025
Written by the Fiveable Content Team โข Last updated September 2025
Definition
A histogram is a type of bar graph used to represent the frequency distribution of a dataset. It displays data using adjacent bars to show the number of observations within each interval.
5 Must Know Facts For Your Next Test
Histograms are used to visualize the distribution and spread of continuous data.
The x-axis represents intervals (or bins) while the y-axis represents frequencies.
Bins in a histogram must be contiguous and of equal width.
Histograms can help identify patterns such as skewness, modality, and outliers in the data.
Unlike bar charts, histograms do not have gaps between bars unless an interval has zero frequency.
A graphical representation of the distribution of a dataset, where points representing frequencies at midpoints of intervals are connected by straight lines.