Charts

For all you need to know about charts click here for DISCUSS on charts . Here you will find help and examples on every type of chart that you are likely to meet, plus templates for you to fill in your own data for each chart. It includes the following:

Here are two additional resources to help you understand histograms and boxplots.

Histograms are similar to, and often confused with, a bar chart but are ONLY used for CONTINUOUS data.  If you have a Java enabled browser you can see how class widths can affect the shape of a histogram. Change the widths by dragging the arrow  underneath the scale. The observations are the duration (in minutes) for eruptions of the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone National Park. When the class intervals are large the bimodal nature of the data is hidden, and with small intervals one gets no overall view. What size interval do you think helps provide the best understanding of the data?  The applet was written by R Webster West of the University of South Carolina and I am grateful to him for being able to reproduce it here.

The following animation shows how a boxplot is drawn.

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Updated Sidney Tyrrell, MIS, Coventry University, January 2005.