Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
MEASURES OF
SKEWNESS
EEBA AFSAR
MBA 3rd SEMESTER
Roll no- 127609
SKEWNESS DEFINED
A fundamental task in many statistical analyses is to characterize the location and variability of a
data set. A further characterization of the data includes skewness and kurtosis.
Measure of Dispersion tells us about the variation of the data set. Skewness tells us about the
direction of variation of the data set. In probability theory and statistics, skewness is a measure of
the extent to which a probability distribution of a real-valued random variable "leans" to one side
of the mean. The skewness value can be positive or negative, or even undefined.
Skewness is a measure of symmetry, or more precisely, the lack of symmetry. A distribution, or
data set, is symmetric if it looks the same to the left and right of the center point. Skewness
describes the degree to which the data deviates from symmetry. When the distribution of the data
is not symmetrical, it is said to be asymmetrical or skewed.
The qualitative interpretation of the skew is complicated. For a unimodal distribution, negative
skew indicates that the tail on the left side of the probability density function is longer or fatter
than the right side it does not distinguish these shapes. Conversely, positive skew indicates that
the tail on the right side is longer or fatter than the left side. In cases where one tail is long but
the other tail is fat, skewness does not obey a simple rule. For example, a zero value indicates
that the tails on both sides of the mean balance out, which is the case both for a symmetric
distribution, and for asymmetric distributions where the asymmetries even out, such as one tail
being long but thin, and the other being short but fat. Further, in multimodal distributions and
discrete distributions, skewness is also difficult to interpret.
KINDS OF SKEWNESS
If some observations, of very high or low magnitude, are added to such a distribution, its right or
left tail gets elongated.
These observations are also known as extreme observations. The presence of extreme
observations on the right hand side of a distribution makes it positively skewed and the three
averages, viz., mean, median and mode, will no longer be equal. In fact the situation will be like
this: Mean > Median > Mode when a distribution is positively skewed.
On the other hand, the presence of extreme observations to the left hand side of a distribution
make it negatively skewed and the relationship between mean, median and mode is: Mean <
Median < Mode. The direction and extent of skewness can be measured in various ways.
Following figure denotes a negatively skewed distribution:
MEASURES OF SKEWNESS
The direction and extent of skewness can be measured in various ways which are discussed as
follows:
Where
Sk = Coefficient of Skewness
s.d. = Standard deviation.
The sign of Sk gives the direction and its magnitude gives the extent of skewness.
If Sk > 0, the distribution is positively skewed, and if S, < 0 it is negatively skewed.
It is evident that Sk is strategically dependent upon mode. If mode is not defined for a
distribution we cannot find Sk . But empirical relation between mean, median and mode
states that, for a moderately symmetrical distribution, we have:
Mean - Mode = 3 (Mean - Median)
Hence Karl Pearson's coefficient of skewness is defined in terms of median as:
Example - Compute the Karl Pearson's coefficient of skewness from the following data:
Table 1-
To find mode, it is noted that height is a continuous variable. It is assumed that the height
has been measured under the approximation that a measurement on height that is, e.g.,
greater than 58 but less than 58.5 is taken as 58 inches while a measurement greater than
or equal to 58.5 but less than 59 is taken as 59 inches. Thus the given data can be written
as:
The Bowley's coefficient for the data on heights given in Table 1 in the previous example
is computed below:
Computation of Q1:
Computation of Md (Q2):
Computation of Q3:
The value of Sp for the data given in Table 1, can be computed as given below.
Computation of P10:
Computation of P90:
It may be noted here that although the coefficient Sk, Sq and Sp, are not comparable, however, in
the absence of skewness, each of them will be equal to zero.
REFERENCES
www.wikipedia.org
Elhance, D. N. and V. lhance, 1988, Fundamentals of Statistics, Kitab Mahal, Allahabad.
Nagar, A. L. and R. K. Dass, 1983, Basic Statistics, Oxford University Press, Delhi.
Mansfield, E., 1991, Statistics for Business and Economics: Methods and Applications,
W.W. Norton and Co.
Yule, G U. and M. G Kendall, 1991, An Introduction to the Theory of Statistics,
Universal Books, Delhi.