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2f: How To Make A Frequency Distribution Graph in Excel
2f: How To Make A Frequency Distribution Graph in Excel
How to make a frequency distribution graph in Excel
Once you have a
frequency
distribution table it is
easy to have an extra
frequency
distribution graph.
Click on the table,
then on Insert, and
then on Column:
Marc Brysbaert www.palgrave.com/psychology/brysbaert
Basic Statistics for Psychologists 2f: Making a grouped frequency distribution graph
Palgrave, 2011 1
Choose 2D column:
This is the outcome:
Marc Brysbaert www.palgrave.com/psychology/brysbaert
Basic Statistics for Psychologists 2f: Making a grouped frequency distribution graph
Palgrave, 2011 2
To make the bars
wide enough so that
they touch each
other, click on one of
the bars until they
get activated:
Click on the right
mouse button to get
the following panel:
Marc Brysbaert www.palgrave.com/psychology/brysbaert
Basic Statistics for Psychologists 2f: Making a grouped frequency distribution graph
Palgrave, 2011 3
Choose Format Data
Series and shift the
slider to No Gap.
This should be the
outcome (you can
change many more
things about the
chart by clicking on
various parts of it,
including the border
colour of the bars,
the legends of the
axes, etc.):
Marc Brysbaert www.palgrave.com/psychology/brysbaert
Basic Statistics for Psychologists 2f: Making a grouped frequency distribution graph
Palgrave, 2011 4
Exactly the same
steps apply to
nominal data, which
should give you the
following outcome:
Marc Brysbaert www.palgrave.com/psychology/brysbaert
Basic Statistics for Psychologists 2f: Making a grouped frequency distribution graph
Palgrave, 2011 5
Going Further
There are several ways
in which we can make
the graph nicer than
what has been shown
before. Let us have a
look at the graph for
the short‐term
memory span, which is
redrawn with the
more informative
column heading STM‐
span rather than X‐
value. I’ve also added
span 3 so that the X‐
axis starts at this value
and left out the row
More (which is
uninformative for the
graph). This is how the
edited distribution
table looks like:
This is what my output
looks like when I do
Insert, Column, 2D
Column:
Marc Brysbaert www.palgrave.com/psychology/brysbaert
Basic Statistics for Psychologists 2f: Making a grouped frequency distribution graph
Palgrave, 2011 6
First, I change the Y‐
axis by activating it
and then by clicking
on the right mouse
button:
Select Format Axis at
the very bottom of the
panel. I want the
values of the Y‐axis to
go from 0 to 5 in single
units. This can be
entered as follows:
Marc Brysbaert www.palgrave.com/psychology/brysbaert
Basic Statistics for Psychologists 2f: Making a grouped frequency distribution graph
Palgrave, 2011 7
A further interesting
option is to activate
Chart Tools. This will
make it easier to add
and delete parts of the
graph.
This gives the
following options:
I select the Chart
Layout that will allow
me to enter axis
labels.
Marc Brysbaert www.palgrave.com/psychology/brysbaert
Basic Statistics for Psychologists 2f: Making a grouped frequency distribution graph
Palgrave, 2011 8
By right‐clicking on the
Axis titles, I can not
only give them new
names (by using the
option Edit), but also
change their font (if I
wish to), as done here:
Marc Brysbaert www.palgrave.com/psychology/brysbaert
Basic Statistics for Psychologists 2f: Making a grouped frequency distribution graph
Palgrave, 2011 9
What I also may want
is to have borders
around my bars.
Activate the bars and
click on the right
mouse button:
Marc Brysbaert www.palgrave.com/psychology/brysbaert
Basic Statistics for Psychologists 2f: Making a grouped frequency distribution graph
Palgrave, 2011 10
Select Format Data
Series and choose a
solid gray line as
border colour:
Now the inside colour
is much heavier than
the borders of the
bars:
Marc Brysbaert www.palgrave.com/psychology/brysbaert
Basic Statistics for Psychologists 2f: Making a grouped frequency distribution graph
Palgrave, 2011 11
We can change this by
changing the Fill
option in Format Data
Series into either No
fill or Gradient fill.
Let us chose Gradient
fill with a high
transparency value.
Marc Brysbaert www.palgrave.com/psychology/brysbaert
Basic Statistics for Psychologists 2f: Making a grouped frequency distribution graph
Palgrave, 2011 12
This then is how the
frequency distribution
graph looks like.
Tweak it further to
your own liking!
Marc Brysbaert www.palgrave.com/psychology/brysbaert
Basic Statistics for Psychologists 2f: Making a grouped frequency distribution graph
Palgrave, 2011 13