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Considerations of the shape of a distribution arise in statistical data analysis, where simple quantitative descriptive statistics and plotting techniques such as histograms can lead on to the selection of a particular family of distributions for modelling purposes. The normal distribution, often called the "bell curve" Exponential distribution
The distribution is said to be left-skewed, left-tailed, or skewed to the left, despite the fact that the curve itself appears to be skewed or leaning to the right; left instead refers to the left tail being drawn out and, often, the mean being skewed to the left of a typical center of the data. A left-skewed distribution usually appears as a ...
A similar effect can be achieved by taking the square root of the data. To fit a symmetrical distribution to data obeying a negatively skewed distribution (i.e. skewed to the left, with mean < mode, and with a right hand tail this is shorter than the left hand tail) one could use the squared values of the data to accomplish the fit.
Thus, when there is evidence of substantial skew in the data, it is common to transform the data to a symmetric distribution [1] before constructing a confidence interval. If desired, the confidence interval for the quantiles (such as the median) can then be transformed back to the original scale using the inverse of the transformation that was ...
The exponentially modified normal distribution is another 3-parameter distribution that is a generalization of the normal distribution to skewed cases. The skew normal still has a normal-like tail in the direction of the skew, with a shorter tail in the other direction; that is, its density is asymptotically proportional to for some positive .
If the symmetry of the distribution is the main interest, the skew normal family or asymmetric version of the generalized normal family discussed below can be used. If the tail behavior is the main interest, the student t family can be used, which approximates the normal distribution as the degrees of freedom grows to infinity.
Skewness risk can arise in any quantitative model that assumes a symmetric distribution (such as the normal distribution) but is applied to skewed data. Ignoring skewness risk, by assuming that variables are symmetrically distributed when they are not, will cause any model to understate the risk of variables with high skewness.
Normal probability plots are made of raw data, residuals from model fits, and estimated parameters. A normal probability plot. In a normal probability plot (also called a "normal plot"), the sorted data are plotted vs. values selected to make the resulting image look close to a straight line if the data are approximately normally distributed.