Distribution
Stacked histogram
Shows total frequency per numeric bin and each group's contribution.
- Plot
- Distribution
- Composition
What it answers
Which groups contribute to each value range?
- Shape
- Stacked segments within numeric bins
- What it shows
- Frequency and contributors by bin.
Example
The question
How are order values spread, and which channel makes up each band?
Orders by value band and channel (illustrative)
Illustrative data. It belongs to no company.
When to use it
Use it when
Showing distribution and group composition together.
Avoid it when
When direct group-shape comparison is more important than total frequency.
How to read it
Read total bin height, then stacked group segments.
Note
Use the same bin edges across groups.
The data you need
- Layout
- Long table
- Fields
- Group: text; Value: number
- One row is
- One raw observation belonging to a group. What is the grain?
- Rules
- Retain individual observations and group labels. State weighting and missing-data rules.
- Optional
- For box plots only, some tools accept Group,Q1,Median,Q3,WhiskerLow,WhiskerHigh plus separate outliers. Other distributions usually need raw data.
- Preparation
- Keep raw numeric observations, group them if needed and handle missingness explicitly. Choose bins, bandwidth or summary conventions as appropriate to this specific plot.
- Units
- The measurement axis retains its original unit. Frequency uses observations; normalised frequency divides by group sample size; density also depends on interval width.
Worked example
A10,12,18; B11,23. Counts below 20 total 4: A3, B1; counts 20-30 total 1 from B.
| Group | Value |
|---|---|
| A | 10 |
| A | 12 |
| A | 18 |
| B | 11 |
| B | 23 |