Re: Histogram "Bins" tab options problem

["Daniel P. Dougherty" <doughe57 msu edu>]

Sorry if this starts to sound rant-ish  (it's really not).

It might be cleaner to have a check box way back in the  "Graphs & Options" 
tab to provide the option to the user to normalize the frequencies by bin 
width rather than have the "Histogram chart" option forcibly (and silently) do 
this.

At my first user experience of the "Histogram Chart" option was that it was 
simply a "Column chart" with the Gap set to 0%.  This intuition turned out to 
be incorrect, but it's really what I thought as a first experience with that 
feature and I imagine probably what most first-time users experience with that 
feature.  So the "Histogram Chart" option not only looks different but 
_behaves_ differently which sort of sneaks up on you as a user and takes some 
time getting used to.

Note: There is already a tick box in the  "Graphs & Options" to get a 
cummulative view of the data so it seems appropriate to have a tick option to 
yes/no normalize by bin width there as well.  Ok, yes the graphical histogram 
chart option has this functionality too so you can turn the cummulative aspect 
on/off without having to go back and redo but then it's only in the Histogram 
Chart option -- not there in the column or bar chart types. Getting a 
cummulative view is a nice feature -- but I think having the option to 
normalize (also) needs to be back  at the  "Graphs & Options" as a tick box 
for users that may want column chart type.  I imagine more users will know 
ahead-of-time if they want a cummulative histogram and would expect that such 
an option to come early in the work flow rather than as an option of the 
graphical object at the very end of their work flow as an after-thought.