Stemplots

Stemplots are similar to histograms in both in their appearance, and the way they sort data into groups.

To make a stemplot:
1. Divide each observation into two parts, the steam and the leaf. The stem is all but the last digit of the observation, the leaf is the last digit.
2. Write each unique stem in a column from smallest to largest.
3. To the right of each stem, write the leaf of each observation with that stem, from smallest to largest.

For example:
Organising the data
49, 52, 56, 72, 81, 89, 67, 87, 56, 67, 73, 87, 91, 56, 103, 79, 82
into a stemplot, would produce this result.


As you can see, a stemplot resembles a histogram turned on its side.

In order obtain a more meaningful representation of the distribution you may round the observations (e.g. to the nearest 10,) or split the stems.
To split the stems write each number in the stem column twice. To the right of the first put the leaves 0-4, to the right of the second put the leaves 5-9. This is done when there are many observations in order to give more detail. Stems can be split into more than 2 if necessary.