Histogram with Excel 2007

Using Excel 2007 to Construct a Histogram
1. Open an Excel spreadsheet and enter the data for the graph you wish to create
(The above data is an example only. It is not data for lab 1.)
Highlight column A. On the Home tab, click on “Sort & Filter” and select “Sort Smallest to Largest.”
2. Your data is now organized so that you can see your data range. You need to organize the data into “bins”
(sub-data ranges.) There are no hard and fast rules to follow. You use your best judgment about what
values will give the best view of the distribution represented by your sample data. In the case above you
might decide data values from 0 to 44 are reasonable sample values. If we wish 9 bins then each bin should
be 5 units wide. They are 0-4, 5-9, 10-14, …, 40-44. For the first bin, 0,1,2,3,4 are its five possible values.
Each left/right bin-bound is found by adding 5 to the previous corresponding bin-bound. We will get Excel
to count the number of data values in each bin.
3. In column C, enter the upper bounds of the bins.

4. Click “Data Analysis.” In the dialogue box, select “Histogram” and click “OK.”
5. Click in the white “Input Range” box. Click and drag down column A to include all your sorted data.
6. Click in the white “Bin Range” box. Click and drag down column C to include all of your upper bound bin
values.
7. Select “Output Range.” Click in any empty cell. This is where your output will be placed. The dialogue
box should look similar to the one below. Then click “OK.”
8. Excel produces the Bin Distribution table.
Bin Frequency
4 2
9 6
14 8
19 7
24 6
29 3
34 2
39 0
44 4
49 0
More 0

9. We are now going to make labels for the bar chart’s columns. In cell D1 enter an apostrophe followed by
0-4. Press the enter key to go to cell D2 and enter an apostrophe followed by 5-9. Continue in this fashion
until all the bin labels are listed. Ignore the “More” bin.
10. In column E, enter the counts for each bin from the Bin Frequency table.
A lot of what we have had Excel do for us we could have done manually for such a small data set, but for a very
large data set, the skills we are practicing can save a tremendous amount of time and energy.
Creating the Histogram
11. Highlight the labels and the frequency numbers from cell D1 through E10. Click on the “Insert” tab. We
will create a 2-D column chart. Select the first one.

12. Excel will create your chart, but you are not finished. At the top in “Chart Tools Design,” You will see a
variety of formats for bar charts. Click on the down arrow and select the chart that has a Title bar and both axes
bars.
13. Right click on “Series 1” and select “Delete.”
14. Right click on the Title bar and select “Edit text.” Type in the title of your histogram. Repeat this process
for each axis.

15. Right click on any bar in your chart and select “Format Data Series.” In the dialogue box, move the Gap
Width slider to 0 and click on “Close.”
You are finished creating your histogram. Click in any cell and save /print your histogram.

Appendix A
You can make many other types of charts very quickly now that our data is all organized. Select the data you
want to use. Then select the “Insert” tab from the top menu, choose “chart”, and select the type of chart you
want. As with the histogram, you may need to make additional choices to get the graph to be just the way you
want it.
Remember, your data usually consists of a column of labels and next to it a column of the data (or organized
data: see the table below.) Below is a pie chart. You should see this in color!
0%
5%
8%
15%
10%
5%
18%
21%
4 0-4
9 5-9
14 10-14
19 15-19
24 20-24
29 25-29
34 30-34
18%
39 35-39
44 40-44
0-4 2
5-9 6
10-14 8
15-19 7
20-24 6
25-29 3
30-34 2
35-39 0
40-44 4

Appendix B
1. Click the Microsoft Office Button , and then click Excel Options in the bottom right –hand corner of the drop-down box.
2. Click Add-Ins, and then in the Manage box, select Excel Add-ins from the left-hand column.
3. Click Go located on the bottom of the screen.
4. In the Add-Ins available box, select the Analysis ToolPak check box, and then click OK.
Tip If Analysis ToolPak is not listed in the Add-Ins available box, click Browse to locate it.
If you get prompted that the Analysis ToolPak is not currently installed on your computer, click Yes to install it.
5. After you load the Analysis ToolPak, the Data Analysis command is available in the Analysis group on the Data tab.