Stem-and-Leaf Plots

What is a stem-and-leaf plot?

A stem-and-leaf plot organizes data by splitting each number into a stem (leading digit(s)) and a leaf (last digit). It preserves the original data while showing the distribution shape.

Step-by-step: {23, 25, 28, 31, 34, 37, 42, 45, 48, 51}

Step 1 — Identify stems and leaves:

| Stem | Leaves | |------|--------| | 2 | 3, 5, 8 | | 3 | 1, 4, 7 | | 4 | 2, 5, 8 | | 5 | 1 |

Step 2 — Read: Stem 2, leaf 3 means 23. Stem 4, leaf 5 means 45.

Advantages over histograms

• Preserves the actual data values (a histogram only shows counts per bin).
• Shows the shape of the distribution (like a sideways histogram).
• Easy to find the median: count from either end to the middle.

Try it in the visualization

The data is sorted and split into stems and leaves. The plot builds step by step. Rotate it 90° to see it looks like a histogram.