Histogram

A chart that slices the number line into bins and draws a bar counting how many values land in each — making the data's shape visible.

Visual intuition

mean

Bin these values and count — the bar heights are the shape

Each dot is one raw value scattered around the mean. A histogram organizes exactly this: slice the axis into equal bins, count the dots in each, and draw the counts as bars — turning a cloud into a readable shape.

Example

Bin 200 commute times into 10-minute bins and the bars might peak at 20 to 30 minutes with a long right tail past 60 — a shape, and a , that the 31-minute alone would never reveal (illustrative numbers).

How It Works

Take every value in a dataset, slice the axis into equal bins — 0 to 10, 10 to 20, and so on — and stack a bar per bin counting how many values fell in. The result shows the data's shape at a glance: one hump or two, symmetric or long-tailed, gaps and stragglers. That shape is exactly what single-number summaries erase — a of 40 could be a tight pile at 40 or two camps at 20 and 60, and only the picture tells you which. Unlike a bar chart, the x-axis is a number line, so the bar order is not a choice. The one big knob is bin width: too wide smooths detail away, too narrow shatters the shape into noise — it is worth trying a couple.