Understanding the Hive Column Statistical Profiler

You can view the shape or distribution characteristics of the columnar data within a Hive table based on the Hive column profiler.

There are different charts available to help visualize the shape and distribution of the data within the column as well as summary statistics (such as means, null count, and cardinality of the data) for a column. The profiler computes column univariate statistics that are displayed using an appropriate chart in the Schema tab.

Pie charts are presented for categorical data with limited number of categories or classes. Examples include data such as blood group, gender, and titles that only have a fixed list of values (categories or labels).

When the data within columns is numeric, a histogram of the distribution of values organized into 10 groups (decile frequency histogram) and a box plot with a five-number summary (mean, median, quartiles, maximum, and minimum values) are shown for the column.