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Interpretare Simetrie Boltire

The document discusses skewness and how to interpret skewness values. It states that positive skewness means the right tail is longer, negative skewness means the left tail is longer, and a skewness of 0 indicates perfect symmetry. It then provides a rule of thumb for interpreting skewness values, considering values between -1/2 and 1/2 to indicate approximate symmetry, between -1 and -1/2 or 1/2 and 1 to be moderately skewed, and less than -1 or greater than 1 to be highly skewed. As an example, it notes that student height data with a skewness of -0.1098 is approximately symmetric. It cautions that sample

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45 views2 pages

Interpretare Simetrie Boltire

The document discusses skewness and how to interpret skewness values. It states that positive skewness means the right tail is longer, negative skewness means the left tail is longer, and a skewness of 0 indicates perfect symmetry. It then provides a rule of thumb for interpreting skewness values, considering values between -1/2 and 1/2 to indicate approximate symmetry, between -1 and -1/2 or 1/2 and 1 to be moderately skewed, and less than -1 or greater than 1 to be highly skewed. As an example, it notes that student height data with a skewness of -0.1098 is approximately symmetric. It cautions that sample

Uploaded by

Dan Vasiliu
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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If skewness is positive, the data are positively skewed or skewed right,

meaning that the right tail of the distribution is longer than the left. If
skewness is negative, the data are negatively skewed or skewed left,
meaning that the left tail is longer.
If skewness = 0, the data are perfectly symmetrical. But a skewness of
exactly zero is quite unlikely for real-world data, so how can you interpret the
skewness number? Bulmer (1979) a classic suggests this rule of thumb:

If skewness is less than 1 or greater than +1, the distribution is highly


skewed.

If skewness is between 1 and or between + and +1, the


distribution ismoderately skewed.

If skewness is between and +, the distribution is approximately


symmetric.
With a skewness of 0.1098, the sample data for student heights are
approximately symmetric.
Caution: This is an interpretation of the data you actually have. When
you have data for the whole population, thats fine. But when you have a
sample, the sample skewness doesnt necessarily apply to the whole
population. In that case the question is, from the sample skewness, can you
conclude anything about the population skewness? To answer that question,
see the next section.
Bulmer, M. G. 1979. Principles of Statistics. Dover.
Balanda and MacGillivray (1988) say the same thing in another
way: increasing kurtosis is associated with the movement of
probability mass from the shoulders of a distribution into its center
and tails.

You may remember that the mean and standard deviation have the same
units as the original data, and the variance has the square of those units.
However, the kurtosis has no units: its a pure number, like a z-score.
The reference standard is a normal distribution, which has a kurtosis of 3. In
token of this, often the excess kurtosis is presented: excess kurtosis is
simply kurtosis3. For example, the kurtosis reported by Excel is actually
the excess kurtosis.

A normal distribution has kurtosis exactly 3 (excess kurtosis exactly 0).


Any distribution with kurtosis 3 (excess 0) is called mesokurtic.

A distribution with kurtosis <3 (excess kurtosis <0) is


called platykurtic. Compared to a normal distribution, its central peak
is lower and broader, and its tails are shorter and thinner.

A distribution with kurtosis >3 (excess kurtosis >0) is


called leptokurtic. Compared to a normal distribution, its central peak
is higher and sharper, and its tails are longer and fatter.

Balanda, Kevin P., and H. L. MacGillivray. 1988. Kurtosis: A Critical


Review. The American Statistician 42(2), 111119.

Test de normalitate Kolmogorov Smirnov p>0.10


Med>2SD

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