Here is the example I showed in class when we discussed frequency distributions and histograms at the beginning of the semester, which shows the age distributions of the US population over time:

• From the New York Times: “The Aging of America“

A similar post appeared on WashingtonPost’s Wonkblog:

• “This is a mesmerizing little animation created by Bill McBride of Calculated Risk. It shows the distribution of the U.S. population by age over time, starting at 1900 and ending with Census Bureau forecasts between now and 2060.”

What do you notice about how the distributions evolve over time? Click thru to either the CalculatedRisk blog post on which this animation first appeared or to the WashingtonPost link to read some discussion.

Also here is a related set of histograms that were featured in the NYT Business section in May, as part of an article titled “Younger Turn for a Graying Nation“:

That was an installment of a weekly column in the NYT Business section titled “Off the Charts,” which discusses a graph and the underlying data every Saturday.