4.3. Dual histogram

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A popular graph in demography is a population pyramid, which can be defined as shown in the box below.

Definition: population pyramid
population pyramid
"diagram designed to show the comparison of a human population by sex and age at a given time, consisting of a pair of histograms, one for each sex, laid on their sides with a common base" (Everitt, 2004, p. 292)

However this does not only apply well for demographic variables, it can also be used for any scale variable that you want to compare between two groups (Dallal & Finseth, 1977). The term dual histogram is therefor used although you might also come across the term pyramid histogram, two-way histogram, or back-to-back histogram.

 

Definition: dual histogram
dual histogram
diagram that shows a histogram, split into two groups, placed back to back

An example of a dual histogram is shown in Figure 1.

Example of a dual histogram
Figure 1. Example of a dual histogram