Math Is Fun Forum

amberzak

Member

Registered: 2012-03-16

Posts: 80

Histograms

In a historgram, do both axis have to be to the same scale (for example, if I have one large square on graph paper representing one minute along the bottom, does the y asia have to be one square for each increase on frequency)?

I know this isn;t the case for other types of graphs, but because the y axis isn;t numbered in the histogram, I was wondering how someone would interpret the data if the areas where not done to this scale.

Does this even make any sense?

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Don't think outside the box. Think there is no box

anonimnystefy

Real Member

From: Harlan's World

Registered: 2011-05-23

Posts: 16,049

Re: Histograms

Hi amberzak

Look at the first picture on the right in this link:Wikipedia-Histogram

You can clearly see that the axis do not have the same scale,so I would say the answer to your question would be-No,they needn't be the same scale.

The area is calculated just by multiplying the values of the sides of the rectangles in your histogram,so the area doesn't depend on the scales of the x and y axis at all.

Stefy

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