A histogram looks similar to a bar chart, but it is important to understand the differences. A histogram does not have any gaps between the bars as they present continuous data whereas a bar chart presents discontinuous data – you may call this discrete data in maths. For example, if conducting a pedestrian count over a continuous period of time (e.g. from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.), you might display this data in a histogram to help understand how the flow of pedestrians changed over time.
In a histogram the bars should be touching and coloured in the same colour. Whereas, if you were conducting a traffic count and wanted to compare the type and frequency of different vehicles you would plot this discrete data on a bar chart. Here all bars would have a space between them and they could be shaded in different colours.
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