Normalization pdf histogram and cdf
How to normalize a histogram in MATLAB? - Stack Overflow
Normalizing a histogram
How do you normalize a histogram from the hist() function of MATLAB? - Stack Overflow
My answer to this is the same as in an answer to your earlier question. For a probability density function, the integral over the entire space is 1. Dividing by the sum will not give you the correct density. To get the right density, you must divide by the area. To illustrate my point, try the following example.
[f, x] = hist(randn(10000, 1), 50); % Create histogram from a normal distribution.
g = 1 / sqrt(2 * pi) * exp(-0.5 * x .^ 2); % pdf of the normal distribution
% METHOD 1: DIVIDE BY SUM
figure(1)
bar(x, f / sum(f)); hold on
plot(x, g, 'r'); hold off
% METHOD 2: DIVIDE BY AREA
figure(2)
bar(x, f / trapz(x, f)); hold on
plot(x, g, 'r'); hold off
You can see for yourself which method agrees with the correct answer (red curve).

Another method (more straightforward than method 2) to normalize the histogram is to divide by sum(f * dx) which expresses the integral of the probability density function, i.e.
% METHOD 3: DIVIDE BY AREA USING sum()
figure(3)
dx = diff(x(1:2))
bar(x, f / sum(f * dx)); hold on
plot(x, g, 'r'); hold off
Since 2014b, Matlab has these normalization routines embedded natively in the histogram function (see the help file for the 6 routines this function offers). Here is an example using the PDF normalization (the sum of all the bins is 1).
data = 2*randn(5000,1) + 5; % generate normal random (m=5, std=2)
h = histogram(data,'Normalization','pdf') % PDF normalization
The corresponding PDF is
Nbins = h.NumBins;
edges = h.BinEdges;
x = zeros(1,Nbins);
for counter=1:Nbins
midPointShift = abs(edges(counter)-edges(counter+1))/2;
x(counter) = edges(counter)+midPointShift;
end
mu = mean(data);
sigma = std(data);
f = exp(-(x-mu).^2./(2*sigma^2))./(sigma*sqrt(2*pi));
The two together gives
hold on;
plot(x,f,'LineWidth',1.5)

An improvement that might very well be due to the success of the actual question and accepted answer!
EDIT - The use of hist and histc is not recommended now, and histogram should be used instead. Beware that none of the 6 ways of creating bins with this new function will produce the bins hist and histc produce. There is a Matlab script to update former code to fit the way histogram is called (bin edges instead of bin centers - link). By doing so, one can compare the pdf normalization methods of @abcd (trapz and sum) and Matlab (pdf).
The 3 pdf normalization method give nearly identical results (within the range of eps).
TEST:
A = randn(10000,1);
centers = -6:0.5:6;
d = diff(centers)/2;
edges = [centers(1)-d(1), centers(1:end-1)+d, centers(end)+d(end)];
edges(2:end) = edges(2:end)+eps(edges(2:end));
figure;
subplot(2,2,1);
hist(A,centers);
title('HIST not normalized');
subplot(2,2,2);
h = histogram(A,edges);
title('HISTOGRAM not normalized');
subplot(2,2,3)
[counts, centers] = hist(A,centers); %get the count with hist
bar(centers,counts/trapz(centers,counts))
title('HIST with PDF normalization');
subplot(2,2,4)
h = histogram(A,edges,'Normalization','pdf')
title('HISTOGRAM with PDF normalization');
dx = diff(centers(1:2))
normalization_difference_trapz = abs(counts/trapz(centers,counts) - h.Values);
normalization_difference_sum = abs(counts/sum(counts*dx) - h.Values);
max(normalization_difference_trapz)
max(normalization_difference_sum)

The maximum difference between the new PDF normalization and the former one is 5.5511e-17.
hi, i plotted a histogram, and need the area under it to be one, rn it's 1.6, any idea how to fix this? that's my code: % Histograms
figure('Name','histograms')
histogram(FEV1.Variables,'Normalization','pdf','FaceColor','b','Edge
Color','w','NumBins',10);
xlabel('Volume (L)');