Practical Approach to the Interpretation of Complete Blood Count Reports and Histograms

The histogram is a graphical representation in the x-y form of data distribution in a data set. The horizontal x-axis is labeled with what the data represents (for instance, distance from your home to school). The vertical y-axis is labeled either frequency or relative frequency (or percent frequency or probability).
A histogram graph consists of contiguous (adjoining) boxes. The heights of the bars correspond to frequency values. The graph will have the same shape with respective labels. The...

A probability histogram is a visual representation of a probability distribution. Similar a typical histogram, the probability histogram consists of contiguous (adjoining) boxes. It has both a horizontal axis and a vertical axis. The horizontal axis is labeled with what the data represents. The vertical axis is labeled with probability. Each rectangular bar in the histogram is 1 unit wide, which suggests that the area under each bar equals the probability, P(x), where x is 1, 2, 3, and so on.

Run charts, essentially line graphs plotted over time, serve as fundamental yet effective tools for process analysis. They chronicle data sequentially, facilitating the identification of trends, shifts, or cyclical movements. This graphical representation is instrumental in determining whether a process is stable or exhibits signs of potential instability indicative of special cause variation. In the healthcare domain, run charts depict infection rates over time, enabling hospitals to monitor...

R chart, or range chart, is a fundamental tool in statistical process control used to monitor the variability within a process. It complements the X-bar (x̄) chart by focusing on the range of the data, rather than individual values, providing a clear picture of the process dispersion over time.
An R chart plots the range of subsets of measurements collected from a process. Each point on the chart represents the range—defined as the difference between the maximum and minimum...

The relative frequency depicts the proportion of data points that have each value. The frequency tells the number of data points that have each value. Like the histogram, a relative frequency histogram also has the same shape with a horizontal scale (the x-axis), but the vertical scale (the y-axis) is marked with relative frequencies (percentages of the whole) instead of actual frequencies. A relative frequency histogram is a graphical representation of a frequency distribution where the...

The development of flow cytometry techniques began in 1934 with initial attempts by Andrew Moldavan, a bacteriologist who counted the cells in a flowing capillary system. Moldavan pumped cells through a capillary tube focused under a microscope for visualization. The invention of photometry allowed the measurement of differentially-stained cells, and Louis Kamentsky developed the first multiparameter flow cytometer in 1965 to identify and count the cancer cells in cervical tissue specimens.
In...