Histogram

Last update: 2023-11-28
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A histogram is similar to a bar chart, but it groups numbers into ranges (buckets). Analytics automates the “bucketing” of numbers into ranges, but you can change the settings in Advanced Settings.

Build a histogram

To create a histogram:

  1. Click Visualizations in the left rail.
  2. Drag Histogram to the panel.
  3. Choose a Metric to drag to the Histogram visualization and click Build.

Blank histogram panel showing the Drop a metric below field.

NOTE

Histograms support only standard metrics, not calculated metrics.

Here we have used the Page Views Metric per Unique Visitors. The first (left) bucket corresponds to 1 page view per unique person, the second bucket to two page views, etc.

Advanced settings

To adjust your histogram settings, click the Settings (“gear”) icon in the upper right corner. Here are the settings you can modify:

Histogram Settings What it Does
Starting Bucket Determines which bucket the histogram starts with. “1” is the default. You can set starting numbers from 0 to infinity (no negative numbers).
Metric Buckets Lets you increase/decrease the number of data ranges (buckets.) The maximum number of buckets is 50.
Metric Bucket Size Lets you set the size of each bucket. For example, you can change the bucket size from 1 page view to 2 page views.
Counting Method Lets you choose among Visitor, Visit, or Hit Type. For example, page views per visit or page views per person or page views per event. For Hit, “Occurrences” is used as the y-axis metric in a freeform table.

Examples:

  • Starting Bucket: 1; Metric Buckets: 5; Metric Bucket Size: 2 will result in this histogram: 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10.
  • Starting Bucket: 0; Metric Buckets: 3; Metric Bucket Size: 5 will result in this histogram: 0-4, 5-9, 10-14

View and edit histogram data

To view or change the data source for the histogram chart, click the dot next to the Histogram header to go to Data Source Settings > Show Data Source.

Data Source Settings options with Show Data Source and Lock Selection selected.

Pre-built filters that show up in the table are internal filters and won’t show up in the filter selector. Click the “i” icon next to the filter name, then click Make public to make the filter public.

Segments showing the edit window and the Make public link.

To explore more ways to manage Freeform data tables and other visualizations, such as doing data breakdowns, go here.

Blog post

Refer to this blog post about information on using histograms to identify unexpected data values.

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