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What is kurtosis?

In: Statistics [Edit categories]

Answer:

I will answer your question in a couple of ways.

First as a concept:

Kurtosis is a measure of whether the data are peaked or flat relative to a normal distribution. That is, data sets with high kurtosis tend to have a distinct peak near the mean, decline rather rapidly, and have heavy tails. Data sets with low kurtosis tend to have a flat top near the mean rather than a sharp peak. A uniform distribution would be the extreme case.

Now as a mathematical formula:

For univariate data Y₁, Y₂, ..., Y_N, the formula for kurtosis is:

where is the mean, is the standard deviation, and N is the number of data points.

You may find more information at this website:

http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/eda/section3/eda35b.htm

First answer by Dblord. Last edit by Dblord. Contributor trust: 156 [recommend contributor ]. Question popularity: 1 [recommend question].

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