What it shows
A stem-and-leaf plot of 25 exam scores. The tens digit is the stem and the units digit is the leaf, with each row’s leaves in ascending order, so the plot keeps every value while showing the shape of the data.
A count column gives the number of leaves in each row, a key shows how to read a leaf, and the median’s leaf is ringed in orange. The data are illustrative.
How to read it
Use the key: 4 | 8 means 48%.
Read a row from left to right. The row 7 | 0 1 2 3 5 6 7 9 holds eight scores, from 70 to 79.
The median is the 13th of the 25 ordered values: 72, the ringed leaf.
Turned on its side, the rows read like the bars of a histogram with bins ten points wide.
The numbers behind it
- Data (n = 25): 48, 53, 57, 59, 61, 62, 64, 66, 66, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 79, 81, 82, 84, 86, 88, 91, 95.
- Leaves per row, from stem 4 to stem 9: 1, 3, 6, 8, 5, 2.
- Median: the 13th ordered value, 72.
Ways to use it in teaching
Give students the raw list and have them build the plot by hand, key included.
Ask what this display keeps that a histogram of the same scores would lose: every individual value.
Have students count leaves to find the median and quartiles, as a step before box plots.
For the summary statistics behind this kind of chart, see our plain-language guide to descriptive statistics.
Sources
- Stem-and-leaf display. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 18, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem-and-leaf_display
