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ELEVATION HISTOGRAM
Bill Rankin, 2007

This graph summarizes the distribution of elevation above and below sea level throughout the entire world. It distills the earth’s crust into five major cateogories. On the left we see the small amount of mountainous land, followed by the relatively straight line for the majority of continental crust. After the abrupt transition between the continents and the oceans, we again see a straight line for oceanic crust, and end with the small but dramatic areas of deep submarine trenches.

The immediate conclusion is that the continents really are distinct from the oceans; without the disruption in the middle of the graph, the curve would almost approximate the S-shape of a Gaussian distribution.