Excel Histogram doesn't use the user-prescribed bins. Histogram bins don't match those given by the user.

Question

I am teaching a statistics class in which one of the exercises is to create a histogram using the bins in column J of this spreadsheet

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Somebody got the following results, and I got the SAME results when I ran the histogram routine on his spreadsheet. Note that the second bin value does not match the one (492.8) in the input range, and then the others don't either. However, when I did exactly the same thing on the same data in my spreadsheet, the bins were correct! There are no options in the input dialogue (shown here) that would cause Excel to do the job two different ways.

Answer 1

I am teaching a statistics class in which one of the exercises is to create a histogram using the bins in column J of this spreadsheet. Somebody got the following results, and I got the SAME results when I ran the histogram routine on his spreadsheet. Note that the second bin value does not match the one (492.8) in the input range, and then the others don't either.

The Histogram feature tried to make sense out of nonsense and reordered the bin limits, as indicated by the blue arrows below.  Teach your students that numeric bin limits should be in ascending order for a histogram to work properly.  Alternatively, perhaps the Bin Range should be J3:J14, omitting the out-of-order numbers in J15:J17.

Answer 2

Thank you; I didn't notice this!