Histograms in Data Analysis Python - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Histograms

📖 Scenario: You work as a data analyst for a small bakery. You have collected data on the number of cookies sold each day for a week. You want to understand how the sales are distributed to help plan baking quantities better.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple program that creates a histogram of cookie sales data to visualize the frequency of sales numbers.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of daily cookie sales numbers

Set a variable for the number of bins in the histogram

Use matplotlib to create a histogram of the sales data

Display the histogram plot

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Histograms help businesses understand how often certain values occur, like daily sales, so they can make better decisions.

💼 Career

Data analysts and scientists use histograms to explore data distributions and communicate insights visually.

1

Create the sales data list

Create a list called cookie_sales with these exact daily sales numbers: 12, 15, 7, 10, 20, 13, 9.

Data Analysis Python

# Create the list cookie_sales with the given numbers
# Your code here

Hint

Use square brackets [] to create a list and separate numbers with commas.

2

Set the number of bins

Create a variable called bins and set it to 5 to define the number of bins for the histogram.

Data Analysis Python

cookie_sales = [12, 15, 7, 10, 20, 13, 9]
# Create the variable bins and set it to 5
# Your code here

Hint

Just assign the number 5 to the variable bins.

3

Create the histogram plot

Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt. Then use plt.hist() with cookie_sales and bins to create the histogram.

Data Analysis Python

cookie_sales = [12, 15, 7, 10, 20, 13, 9]
bins = 5
# Import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# Create histogram with plt.hist(cookie_sales, bins=bins)
# Your code here

Hint

Use import matplotlib.pyplot as plt to import. Then call plt.hist() with the list and bins.

4

Display the histogram

Use plt.show() to display the histogram plot.

Data Analysis Python

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

cookie_sales = [12, 15, 7, 10, 20, 13, 9]
bins = 5

plt.hist(cookie_sales, bins=bins)
# Display the plot with plt.show()
# Your code here

Hint

Call plt.show() to open the histogram window.