← All chart types
distribution family
histogram
Bars showing frequency of values within bins.
Each bar represents a value range (bin); height shows how many observations fall in that range. The shape — skew, kurtosis, modality — IS the story.
When to use
Showing the distribution of a continuous variable across many observations (income brackets, response times).
When NOT to use
You have categorical data (use bar) or just need a single summary (use box-plot).
Rhetorical roles
- distribute
Variants & related
Required primitives
- has_axis_titles
Optional primitives
- has_gridlines
- has_data_labels
Common anti-patterns
- bin-choice-distortion
- truncated-axis
Disambiguation rules
- Bars touch each other (no gaps) because the x-axis is continuous.
- If bars have gaps, it is a bar chart of categorical counts, not a histogram.