Ravindra BagaleCourses & study guides

8. Charts

8.7 Histogram and Box & Whisker

Excel 2016 and later (statistical charts).

  • Histogram – distribution of one numeric measure (how many orders took 0–5, 5–10, 10–15 minutes…).
  • Box & Whisker – median, quartiles and outliers; compares distributions across groups.

Steps in Excel

  1. Select the Delivery Mins column › Insert › Charts › Insert Statistic Chart › Histogram.
  2. Ctrl + 1 on the horizontal axis › Bin width 5 (or Number of bins); optional Overflow bin 30 and Underflow bin.
  3. For box & whisker: select City and Delivery Mins columns › Insert Statistic Chart › Box and Whisker. Each city gets a box; dots beyond the whiskers are outliers.

Worked example. The histogram of 4,800 Pune orders shows most deliveries between 8 and 14 minutes, and a long tail above 20 minutes on rainy evenings. The box plot shows Nagpur's median slightly higher than Pune's.

Ravindra Bagale's Tip

A histogram and a column chart look the same, so many students count manually, make a column chart and set the bins wrong. For a distribution, use the Histogram chart and keep the bin width meaningful (5 minutes). The dots in a box plot are outliers – send them for checking (5.15).

Practice task

Draw a histogram of order amounts with ₹100 bins and an overflow bin at ₹1,000. Draw a box & whisker chart of delivery minutes by city.