Question

What are the differences between histographs and bargraphs ?Name visual appearance and purpose , give examples of when one should use a histogram for the data , and when a bar graph should be used instead.

Answer 1

Bar Graphs

-Bar charts are for discrete data

- Have gaps in the bars to show discreteness of the data

Histograms

-Histograms are continuous (height) or grouped discrete data

-Don’t have gaps between the bars to show that data is continuous

We use bar charts when we have a numerical data with distinct values, so we can make frequency table representing frequency of each value in the data, and when this data is plotted with a bar for each distinct value. when the number of distinct values increases, it is not possible to make the frequency table.Now if we plot frequency vs distinct classes graph, this will be called as a histogram.

Bar graphs have categorical data while histograms have an accurate representation of the distribution of numerical data.