A histogram is a graphical representation of the distribution of numerical data. It's essentially a bar chart, where each bar represents a range of values, and the height of the bar corresponds to the frequency of data points within that range.
For example, if you have a dataset of response times for a web application, a histogram can show you how many requests fall into different time intervals, such as 0-100ms, 100-200ms, and so on.
Histograms are useful in observability because they enable you to quickly understand the shape of the data and identify patterns or anomalies. A histogram of number of errors can quickly show you that errors spiked at a specific time and how the number of errors recovered after that.
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