IDK if mods will let me keep this here or not, but I want your guys opinions and even though I haven't posted much here lately, other than BFI this is my home forum. Anyway, I am cross posting my BFI post here https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/3...esign-1727320/:

IDK if this is the first I have mentioned this or not, but I am building a mobile app for poker players that is primarIly a "poker tracker" and am lucky to be able to work on it as a final project in my "Mobile Application Development Class."

I have build a lot of the app already and am pretty happy with the design. But I do have one area that is nagging me and I am spread to thin to focus on it. So I thought I'd try and group think it here and maybe in the PLO forum.

Anyway, one of the tabs is a "reports" tab and one of things we are doing is a histogram w/ count on the Y-axis and $ (or currency, or big blinds) on the X-axis.

So if you have like a max win of $1000 and a max loss of $1000 with 100 entries. Picture a bell curve with histogram bars that range maybe $200 each. So the first bar would be as tall as the number of sessions you have played that fall between -$1000 & -$800. -$799 & -$600, etc.

We will probably put 1 and 2 standard deviation bars on there too.

The probably I have is I need a mathematical model (or at least a good idea) of how to create these groupings for the histogram.

So like obviously (I think) if the user has only made three entries, each histogram bar would be 1 count tall and would just be the net from each session.

But what is a good approach to divide a range (from max loss to max win) into the right (or ideal) groups. I feel like if they have entered 100 sessions there should be like 10 - 20 "groupings." So with a max win = $1000 & max loss = -$1000 each histogram bar would represent a $100 or $200 range and be as tall as the number of sessions that fell with those values: eg -$1000 -- -$800, etc.

Two things.

First: Your app should auto-create bins and bin ranges, just like excel will auto-create histogram groupings depending on size of data, and size of graph. The more data you have, the more bins you can have.

Second: This has nothing to do with PLO.

1. Yes, that is exactly what I am looking for. Insight into how excel creates the bins. What equation is used?

2. Again yes, its not PLO specific. But poker player's insight is relevant. It could just as easily have gone in HSNL except that Im a PLO player have posted here way more than there.

Thanks for the Excel pointer, I'll see if I can't figure that out.

im not great at excel but it sounds fairly easy to use an equation that takes total w/l, as entered each time, the calculate the bell. 4 sessions will result in high variance, as it should, but over time, with a simple unchanged calc, will result in more accurate and player specific curves

they already provide all the info you need, making the equation shouldnt be hard