What Is It?

A Histogram is a very common plot type used to group rows in your data into different bins. Histograms can be used in either 1D, 2D or 3D.

Why Is This Important?

Grouping your data into different bins can help you identify patterns, especially which combinations of factors commonly occur together. For example, Histograms can help you easily see things like which locations and manufacturing processes lead to higher efficiency, helping to optimize production. Another common use for Histograms is customer segmentation, allowing businesses to better understand which types of customers are the biggest contributors to revenue by examining combinations of many customer traits.

How?

Steps for creating a Histogram:

1. To create a Histogram, drag one feature from the Features list to the X dimension.
2. If you click Apply, you will create a 1D Histogram, the most basic option.
3. You could also add another feature to the Color dimension to view combinations of two features of interest.
4. Adding features to the Y and Z dimensions will create 2D and 3D Histograms which will allow you to see even more combinations, helping to identify more powerful insights.
5. By default, the height (or volume in 3D) of each bin corresponds to the number of rows in that bin. If you place a feature on the Size dimension and open the Plot Settings by clicking on the hamburger menu in the Mapping panel, you can choose to set the height (or volume) to correspond to the average or sum of the features on the Size dimension, which can add even more context to your plot (also called a bar plot).
6. If you are interested in visualizing individual rows as points, consider using a Scatter Plot or Violin Plot.