7.8. Histograms http://www.ck12.org
histograms, with a caption below each one explaining the distribution of the data, as well as the characteristics of
the mean, median, and mode. Distributions can have other shapes besides the ones shown below, but these represent
the most common ones that you will see when analyzing data. In each of the graphs below, the distributions are not
perfectly shaped, but are shaped enough to identify an overall pattern.
a)
Figure a represents a bell-shaped distribution, which has a single peak and tapers off to both the left and to the right
of the peak. The shape appears to be symmetric about the center of the histogram. The single peak indicates that the
distribution is unimodal. The highest peak of the histogram represents the location of the mode of the data set. The
mode is the data value that occurs the most often in a data set. For asymmetric histogram, the values of the mean,
median, and mode are all the same and are all located at the center of the distribution.
b)
Figure b represents a distribution that is approximately uniform and forms a rectangular, flat shape. The frequency
of each class is approximately the same.
c)