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Skewed Data

Data can be skewed, meaning it has a long tail on one side of the peak. Negative skew has a long tail on the left side of the peak, with the mean also on the left. No skew means the data is perfectly symmetrical like a normal distribution, with the mean at the peak. Positive skew has a long tail on the right side of the peak, with the mean on the right of the peak. Income data is often positively skewed, with some individuals earning much more than the average income. Skewness can be calculated to quantify how skewed a data set is.

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565 views2 pages

Skewed Data

Data can be skewed, meaning it has a long tail on one side of the peak. Negative skew has a long tail on the left side of the peak, with the mean also on the left. No skew means the data is perfectly symmetrical like a normal distribution, with the mean at the peak. Positive skew has a long tail on the right side of the peak, with the mean on the right of the peak. Income data is often positively skewed, with some individuals earning much more than the average income. Skewness can be calculated to quantify how skewed a data set is.

Uploaded by

Shreyans Dodia
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Skewed Data

Data can be "skewed", meaning it tends to have a long tail on one side or the other:

Negative Skew

No Skew

Positive Skew

Negative Skew?
Why is it called negative skew? Because the long "tail" is on the negative side of the peak. People sometimes say it is "skewed to the left" (the long tail is on the left hand side) The mean is also on the left of the peak.

The Normal Distribution has No Skew


A Normal Distribution is not skewed. It is perfectly symmetrical. And the Mean is exactly at the peak.

Positive Skew
And positive skew is when the long tail is on the positive side of the peak, and some people say it is "skewed to the right". The mean is on the right of the peak value.

Example: Income Distribution


Here is some data I extracted from a recent Census. As you can see it is positively skewed ... in fact the tail continues way past $100,000

Calculating Skewness
"Skewness" (the amount of skew) can be calculated, for example you could use the SKEW() function in Excel or OpenOffice Calc.

Positive Skew
A curve or distribution of scores that has extreme scores above the mean that are atypical of the majority of scores. (Atypical: Not typical, not usual, not normal but abnormal.) There is also Negative Skew which simply means the exact opposite.

Negative Skew
A curve or distribution of scores that has extreme scores below the mean that are atypical of the majority of scores.

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