5.1 Displaying Distributions: Histograms - Video

Key Ideas

  • In a dataset there are individuals. These individuals may be people, cars, cities, or anything to be examined.
  • The characteristic of an individual is a variable. For different individuals, a variable can take on different values.
  • The distribution of a variable tells us what values the variable takes and how often it takes these values.
  • The most common graph of a distribution with one numerical variable is called a histogram.
  • When constructing a histogram, each piece of data must fall into one class. Each class must be of equal width. For any given dataset, there is more than one way to define the classes. Either you are instructed as to how to define the classes, or you must determine class based on some criteria.