DESCRIBING THE SHAPE

OF DISTRIBUTION
CHAPTER 5

Javid Iqbal (Ph.D)

 Distributional Shape

• Central Tendency

• Dispersion

• Modality

• Skewness

• Kurtosis
 Moments in Statistics
o Mean -It measures the location of the central point
The first central moment is the expected value

o Variance - It measures the spread of values in the distribution.

How far from the normal.
 SKEWNESS (3 rd
Moment)

o Why in the world should I care about

o whether a distribution is skewed,
o how much, and in
o what direction

o Two reasons to know about skewness

o Help to describe important difference between class structure of societies
and nations.
o Help to give basic idea of central tendency
 SKEWNESS (3 rd
Moment)
o Distribution resembles the BELL SHAPE CURVE. They are unimodal and symmetric.
o Not all the time symmetric --- INCOME, EXPENSE.
o The extent to which central tendency is off-center tells about inequality in groups.

OFF CENTER
 Statistical Measure of Skewness
o Normal distribution – is perfectly symmetric.
o Skewness of distribution describes how far off-center the midpoint of distribution.
o High point of distribution deflected towards lower or higher values (positive/negative skewed)
o Degree and direction of skewness.

o Skewness --- Mean - Median = 5.5 - 5.0 = 0.5 (positive skewed)

 Statistical Measure of Skewness
o Normal distribution – is perfectly symmetric.
o Skewness of distribution describes how far off-center the midpoint of distribution.
o High point of distribution deflected towards lower or higher values (positive/negative skewed)
o Degree and direction of skewness.
o Skewness --- Mean-minus- Median 5.5 - 5.0 = 0.5 (positive skewed)

Values 2 or more are generally considered skewed

 Why important to examine Skewness?
o The distribution of income and wealth– Knowing very rich people/ large portion of low income.
(Class structure of two nations or communities).
o Perfect normal distribution – mean, median, mode fall at the same score.
o Skewed distribution– measures of central tendency have different values.
Why important to examine Skewness?
Why important to examine Skewness?
 Data Distributional Shapes

Income (Country 1) Income (country 2) Income (country 3)

 Kurtosis (4 th
Moment)

Kurtosis is a measure of whether the data are heavy-tailed or

light-tailed relative to a normal distribution.
 Kurtosis (4 th
Moment)

o Similar to the distribution of a variable – the bell-shaped curve.

o Kurtosis measures whether the frequencies of distribution decline more or less rapidly than the
standard normal distribution.
o Negative Kurtosis—frequencies decline less rapidly (Platykurtic).
o Positive Kurtosis– frequencies decline more rapidly (leptokurtic).
 Statistical Measure of Kurtosis
o Kurtosis value of zero -- standard normal distribution.
o Positive Values—leptokurtic (more peaked/thinner tails)
o Negative Values – platykurtic (flatter/thick tails).

Excess Kurtosis= (Coefficient of Kurtosis – 3)

-Flatter/peaked than the normal distribution