Histogram - Examples

Examples

The U.S. Census Bureau found that there were 124 million people who work outside of their homes. Using their data on the time occupied by travel to work, Table 2 below shows the absolute number of people who responded with travel times "at least 15 but less than 20 minutes" is higher than the numbers for the categories above and below it. This is likely due to people rounding their reported journey time. The problem of reporting values as somewhat arbitrarily rounded numbers is a common phenomenon when collecting data from people.

Data by absolute numbers
Interval Width Quantity Quantity/width
0 5 4180 836
5 5 13687 2737
10 5 18618 3723
15 5 19634 3926
20 5 17981 3596
25 5 7190 1438
30 5 16369 3273
35 5 3212 642
40 5 4122 824
45 15 9200 613
60 30 6461 215
90 60 3435 57

This histogram shows the number of cases per unit interval so that the height of each bar is equal to the proportion of total people in the survey who fall into that category. The area under the curve represents the total number of cases (124 million). This type of histogram shows absolute numbers, with Q in thousands.

Data by proportion
Interval Width Quantity (Q) Q/total/width
0 5 4180 0.0067
5 5 13687 0.0221
10 5 18618 0.0300
15 5 19634 0.0316
20 5 17981 0.0290
25 5 7190 0.0116
30 5 16369 0.0264
35 5 3212 0.0052
40 5 4122 0.0066
45 15 9200 0.0049
60 30 6461 0.0017
90 60 3435 0.0005

This histogram differs from the first only in the vertical scale. The height of each bar is the decimal percentage of the total that each category represents, and the total area of all the bars is equal to 1, the decimal equivalent of 100%. The curve displayed is a simple density estimate. This version shows proportions, and is also known as a unit area histogram.

In other words, a histogram represents a frequency distribution by means of rectangles whose widths represent class intervals and whose areas are proportional to the corresponding frequencies. The intervals are placed together in order to show that the data represented by the histogram, while exclusive, is also continuous. (E.g., in a histogram it is possible to have two connecting intervals of 10.5–20.5 and 20.5–33.5, but not two connecting intervals of 10.5–20.5 and 22.5–32.5. Empty intervals are represented as empty and not skipped.)

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