Explain why histograms and frequency polygons are used in business statistics. Solution 1) A picture is worth a thousand words, i.e. a visual display is a good way to summarize a large data set. 2) Histograms give some feeling for the overall shape of the data, something that reporting XBAR and S cannot give, i.e. skewness, kurtosis, range. 3) Relative histograms and frequency polygons are estimates of proba- bility functions..