20. Histograms
This chapter describes functions for creating histograms. Histograms
provide a convenient way of summarizing the distribution of a set of
data. A histogram consists of a set of bins which count the number
of events falling into a given range of a continuous variable x.
In GSL the bins of a histogram contain floating-point numbers, so they
can be used to record both integer and non-integer distributions. The
bins can use arbitrary sets of ranges (uniformly spaced bins are the
default). Both one and two-dimensional histograms are supported.
Once a histogram has been created it can also be converted into a
probability distribution function. The library provides efficient
routines for selecting random samples from probability
distributions. This can be useful for generating simulations based real
data.
The functions are declared in the header files `gsl_histogram.h'
and `gsl_histogram2d.h'.
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