Histograms cannot have gaps between the bars, whereas bar charts can have gaps.

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Question restatement: The prompt asserts that histograms cannot have gaps between the bars, while bar charts can have gaps.

Option 1: True. The traditional teaching is that histograms display continuous data by grouping it into adjacent intervals (bins), and the bars are drawn so that they touch each other, indicating no interruption in the continuous scale. A zero-height bin would still be represented by a bar with height zero, but the bars themselves are contiguous to reflect the continuity of the data range. In this view, the lack of deliberate gaps conveys the idea that there is no missing data in the scale.

Option 2: False. This would claim that histograms can have gaps between bars. In practice, some instructors or software might show gaps if certain bins are omitted or if data handling choices create discontinuities, but this is not the typical or preferred representation for histograms. A histogram’s purpose is to illustrate a continuous distribution, so gaps would imply either a non-continuous underlying variable or a deliberate omission of empty bins, which deviates from the standard histogram convention.

Additional nuance: 
- If you encounter an instance where empty bins are not drawn (i.e., no bar for a range with zero counts), a viewer might perceive a gap, but that gap results from binning choices rather than an intrinsic property of histograms. 
- Bar charts, in contrast, can show gaps deliberately to emphasize discrete categories or to indicate missing categories, and gaps are often used to separate distinct groups.

Common misconceptions addressed:
- Some students think histograms always force bars to touch; while this is the standard convention for representing a continuous distribution, it is technically possible to adjust rendering or binning definitions in specialized plots, which could introduce apparent gaps.
- Another misconception is that any chart with bars can have gaps; however, histograms are defined by bins on a continuous scale, and their default visualization is contiguous bars, whereas bar charts represent distinct categories and may or may not be adjacent.

OSC 2030-009 Fall 2025 SUBMIT: Graded Homework Module 1 (Chap 1&2)

Histograms cannot have gaps between the bars, whereas bar charts can have gaps.

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