Statistical Sciences 2035 Chapter 3.4: 3.4 - Measures of Shape
6 Oct 2017
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Document Summary
Measures of shape = tools that can be used to describe the shape of a distribution of data. Skewness = when a distribution is asymmetrical or lacks symmetry. Skewed left (negatively skewed) = when larger values are on the right side. Skewed right (positively skewed) = when larger values are on the left side. Skewness and the relationship of the mean, median, and mode: Concept of skewness helps us to understand relationship of the mean, median, and mode. In unimodal distribution (distribution with one peak) that is skewed, the mode is the apex of the curve and the median is the middle value. Mean tends to be located toward the tail of the distribution because the mean is affected by all values. Bell shaped normal distribution with mean, median and mode. Kurtosis = describes the amount of peakedness of a distribution. Distributions that are tall and thin are referred to as leptokurtic distributions.
