A histogram is an estimated illustration of the circulation of mathematical or categorical data The purpose of histograms is to review the circulation of a univariate data set graphically. They show the center, meaning the location of the information; spread that is the scale of the data; attendance of multiple modes in the statistics. In a histogram, each bar group numbers into series. The taller bar shows that more data falls in that series or range. They show the spread and the shape of continuous sample data. The main difference is that it is only used to plot the frequency of score incidences in a constant data set that has been divided into categories, called bins. On the other hand, bar charts can be used for a lot of other kinds of variables that include nominal and ordinal data sets.

Students will often confuse histograms with common bar charts. While they look somewhat alike, they serve different purposes. Bar charts are commonly used to compare variables. Histograms on the other hand are used to display distributions of variables. Bars in bar charts can be moved around without any repercussion on the validity of the data. Histograms cannot be reordered. Bar charts have spaces between the bars, histograms do not have spaces between their bars. Your students will use these activity sheets to learn how to group data sets into histograms in order to compare and answer questions. Students should already be familiar with the function of histograms.