
There is no “best” number of bins, and different bin sizes can reveal different features of the data. The rectangles of a histogram are drawn so that they touch each other to indicate that the original variable is continuous. The categories (intervals) must be adjacent, and often are chosen to be of the same size.

The categories are usually specified as consecutive, non-overlapping intervals of a variable. It then shows the proportion of cases that fall into each of several categories, with the total area equaling 1. Letter frequency in the English language: A typical distribution of letters in English language text.Ī histogram may also be normalized displaying relative frequencies. An example of the frequency distribution of letters of the alphabet in the English language is shown in the histogram in. The total area of the histogram is equal to the number of data. The height of a rectangle is also equal to the frequency density of the interval, i.e., the frequency divided by the width of the interval. The values of all events can be plotted to produce a frequency distribution.Ī histogram is a graphical representation of tabulated frequencies, shown as adjacent rectangles, erected over discrete intervals (bins), with an area equal to the frequency of the observations in the interval. The relative frequency (or empirical probability) of an event refers to the absolute frequency normalized by the total number of events. These frequencies are often graphically represented in histograms. In statistics, the frequency (or absolute frequency) of an event is the number of times the event occurred in an experiment or study.

