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Cited by 294

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 16 of the 16 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Data-Based Choice of Histogram Bin Width

Wand, M. P.·1997·The American Statistician

Abstract

The most important parameter of a histogram is the bin width because it controls the tradeoff between presenting a picture with too much detail (“undersmoothing”) or too little detail (“oversmoothing”) with respect to the true distribution. Despite this importance there has been surprisingly little research into estimation of the “optimal” bin width. Default bin widths in most common statistical packages are, at least for large samples, quite far from the optimal bin width. Rules proposed by, for example, Scott lead to better large sample performance of the histogram, but are not consistent themselves. In this paper we extend the bin width rules of Scott to those that achieve root-n rates of convergence to the L 2-optimal bin width, thereby providing firm scientific justification for their use. Moreover, the proposed rules are simple, easy and fast to compute, and perform well in simulations.

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Metadata

Authors
Wand, M. P.
Venue
The American Statistician
Published
1997-02
Volume
51
Issue
1
Pages
59-64
ISSN
  • 0003-1305 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-2731
OpenAlex
W2137460067
Cited by
294
References
16
FWCI
4.27
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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Wand, M. P. (1997). Data-Based Choice of Histogram Bin Width. The American Statistician. https://doi.org/10.1080/00031305.1997.10473591

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