Long story short, a histogram chart shows you data distribution across different ranges or buckets. The height of every bar or column represents each range’s count of values. In other words, which value is more frequent or less frequent.
You can show how long customers are waiting with your call center, how tall a class of students is, and (in the case of the data below), how many of a given set of tasks are a certain price. Right below, you’ll be taught how to make a histogram in google sheets.
How to Make a Histogram in Google Sheets
A histogram allows you to figure out things like how long most people wait in call centers, what’s the price of most of the tasks you’ve accomplished in the month, or how tall most students are in a given class.
Also, there’s no need to turn a column chart into a histogram by customization. “Histogram” is an available chart type. In any case, here’s what you need to do.
Step 1: Open an existing spreadsheet or click this link to make a new spreadsheet.
Step 2: Input data you wish to format into a Histogram. In this case, we’ll showcase the frequency distribution of different prices for work or tasks done.
Don’t forget to format it accordingly using the toolbar button for “Currency” so you won’t have to put a dollar sign after each value.
Step 3: Select the whole kit and caboodle of data then click on the “Insert” menu and select “Chart“.
Step 4: On the sidebar “Chart editor“, select “Histogram chart” for the chart type.
Step 5: Do the necessary changes on the vertical and horizontal axis titles to make clear to the viewer which axis represents which data point.
For example, here’s what I did to my specific chart. On the “Y” axis or vertical axis, under the “Chart and axis titles” submenu on the “Customize” tab, I changed the title there to “Tasks Completed”. It refers to the number of data available (45 items all-in-all).
Then, on the “X” axis or horizontal axis, under the same tab and submenu, I changed the title there to “Prices of Each Task”. I could’ve changed it to “Task Prices” as well. It refers to the price range of each item (can go from $150 to all the way to $360).
As you can see on the chart, most of the articles are priced around $150 to $250. Only a minority of tasks are worth more than $200 probably because they’re harder to do or longer to accomplish, especially if they’re being paid by the word or by the hour.
Where Do We Go From Here?
To make a Histogram chart, enter a single-column, multi-row data set that you wish to turn into such a chart into your spreadsheet. Afterwards, select all the cells, click the “Insert” menu, and choose “Chart”.
From there, select “Histogram” as the chart type. You can format your data freely once you’re done. It gives you a better idea of the frequency distribution of the data values as well as any outliers herein.
Thankfully, unlike Gantt charts, there’s a preset available for Histogram charts. You can simply click it to turn any single set of data into a frequency distribution summarizer chart of sorts.
References:
- “Histogram charts“, Google.com Support, Retrieved July 6, 2022
- “Add & edit a chart or graph“, Google.com Support, Retrieved July 6, 2022
- David Petro, “Create a Histogram with Google Sheets“, YouTube, November 2, 2015
- Mr. Rozon, “How to make a Histogram in Google Sheets“, YouTube, November 14, 2019
- Don’t Memorise, “What is a Histogram? | Don’t Memorise“, YouTube, December 20, 2014
- PDFEditing, “How to Create Histogram Chart Graph in Google Docs“, YouTube, August 31, 2019
Google Sheet: make a copy