The construction of histograms from sample data

Abstract

A Histogram is one of the most important tools of descriptive statistics. It provides a Graphical estimation of the Distribution and Statistical Characteristics of the underlying stochastic process from which the sample has been taken. Whenever one is faced with a data set, consisting of n unordered observations from a stable stochastic process, the construction of a histogram should be one of the very first steps in the process of analyzing the data. If the sample size is small it may be difficult to obtain a useful histogram. The choice of the number of intervals, interval size, location and the range is the user's responsibility.