To build a frequency distribution chart, do NOT use Excel’s Histogram add-in tool

A histogram (also called a frequency distribution chart) shows how many times a specific value occurs within a certain range.  It is super-useful if you want to know how a variable is statistically distributed. But Excel’s built-in histogram tool is not the best tool to use:

  • It requires you to specific “bin values” before hand, which requires you to know the minimum and maximum values;
  • If you want to change the number of bars, you have to manually change bar values.
  • The bins are not labeled correctly.

Here we introduce a better way – using PivotTable.  See the below:


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One response to “To build a frequency distribution chart, do NOT use Excel’s Histogram add-in tool”

  1. […] we use PivotTable to draw a histogram (See here for a video demonstration on how to efficiently draw histograms with PivotTables).  The result is as […]

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