Histogram versus Bar Plot

Histogram versus Bar Plot

Histograms are visualizations of frequency (probability) distributions of suitable binned numerical variables. Bar Plots are instead visualizations of the different values of a Categorical Variable.

While superficially the apperance is the same, histograms and bar plots have quite different semantics:

• In a histogram, the number of bins is variable (user defined) but their ordering is not
• In categorical variable bar plot, the number of bars is given (the distinct values of the variable) but their ordering is arbitrary.
• Many of the probabilistic concepts that one can read from a histogram (the overall shape and properties of the distribution) are not meaningful for a bar plot.
• In general the height of the bar in a bar plot will not have the meaning of a frequency

See Also

• Histogram