B Heard

Histograms Made Easy

Statistics For Decision Making

Not to be used, posted, etc. without my expressed permission. B Heard

Before we get started, go to http://

highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0070620164/student_view0/excel_templates.html

And download/save the “Histogram” File to your computer

Histograms Made Easy

Not to be used, posted, etc. without my expressed permission. B Heard

Histograms Made Easy

Not to be used, posted, etc. without my expressed permission. B Heard

Now on your computer open the file you saved

The first thing you need to do is go to the Review Tab and click “Unprotect Sheet”

Histograms Made Easy

Not to be used, posted, etc. without my expressed permission. B Heard

We will be looking at a set of 30 data points. The data is MLB team home runs for the 2009 season.

We will paste our data into the green column labeled Data making sure to clear any cells leftover from the previous data set.

In the case of the home run data we have 30 data points so I want to make sure that the old data left over is cleared before moving on.

Histograms Made Easy

Not to be used, posted, etc. without my expressed permission. B Heard

You can see the column only contains my 30 data points now. I copied my data and then used “Paste Special” to paste only the “Values”, then I cleared the data left over from the template’s original analysis.

Histograms Made Easy

Not to be used, posted, etc. without my expressed permission. B Heard

Let’s say we want to sketch a histogram with nine classes. Let’s take a look at our range (Maximum value minus the Minimum value)It’s 244-95 = 149 for the home run dataLet’s now divide 149 by 9 to get 149/9 = 16.5,

we are going to round up to 17 for starters and see how that works out for us. You can always “tweak” this a little if needed.

Let’s now take a look at the template again.

Not to be used, posted, etc. without my expressed permission. B Heard

Keys to the Central Limit Theorem

Notice I chose 94 for my “Start” because it’s one below my minimum. I entered my “Interval Width” as 17 as described on the previous chart. I chose an “End” value of 246, one above my maximum.

Notice the Bin Labels are a little scrambled, don’t worry about that right now.

Histograms Made Easy

Not to be used, posted, etc. without my expressed permission. B Heard

This is what we have right now. It is a good “sketch” of a histogram.Let’s look at fixing the Bin Labels.

No Need to Worry!Just grab the graph in bottom right hand

corner and pull to make it larger. (YOU CAN’T DO THIS UNLESS YOU HAVE UNPROTECTED THE SHEET)

Histograms Made Easy

Voila! It is beautiful, you can just right click, copy, and paste wherever you need to!

Histograms Made Easy

Histograms Made Easy

Not to be used, posted, etc. without my expressed permission. B Heard

Hopefully this will help you in creating Histograms.

Play around with the template, you can do some interesting things.

We would love to hear if it helps you!Visit us on Facebook at

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