Histogram

Histogram is a graphical representation of the Distribution of data

  • Bins: the intervals used in a histogram. The data must be separated into mutually exclusive and exhaustive bins
  • Cutpoints: the values that define the beginning and the end of the bins
  • Frequency: the count of the number of the data values in each bin
  • The peaks in the distribution are called modes
  • so the variables you plot must be Quantitative Variables

Probability Density Function


hist(d$age, col="blue")
  • Params
    • breaks=100 - how many bars in the histogram
  • hist-one.png
  • here we have 19 bins, and two modes


Bivariate Analysis

It can also be useful for Exploratory Data Analysis of two variables

Consider this example

  • we have two classes of customers: $A$ and $B$
  • and we want to build a model that can distinguish them
  • so we can create a histogram that shows the distribution of age w.r.t. to class attribute
  • hist-bivariate.png
  • can see that age and class are not independent: there is strong correlation between them:
    • if age is lower then some value (say 30), all belong to class $A$
    • if greater than other value - all always belong to class $B$
  • can learn that just using a simple histogram


Cumulative Histogram

Usual histogram estimates the Probability Density Function


See Also

Sources