Shapes of histograms

A histogram may have a variety of shapes. However, the 3 most common of these shapes of histograms are listed below.

• Skewed

• Symmetric

• Uniform.

Examples of symmetric histograms

The dashed lines cut the graph into 2 equal pieces, so both graphs are symmetric with respect to the dashed line.

The dashed lines cut the graph into 2 equal pieces, so both graphs are symmetric with respect to the dashed line.

Uniform histogram

A uniform histogram, also called rectangular histogram has the same frequency for each class.

Skewed histogram

A skewed histogram is not symmetric. When looking at the graph, you will see that it extends more to one side than the other.

If the graph extend more to the right, we call the graph skewed-to-the-right histogram.

If the graph extend more to the left, we call the graph skewed-to-the-left histogram.