Okuzeka
Statistics vocabulary · Probability Distributions

Skewed

Meaning in statistics, with examples

/skjuːd/adjectiveCore term

In statistics, skewed means: Describes a distribution that is not symmetric and has a longer tail on one side; in a right-skewed distribution a few very large values stretch the tail to the right.

In Turkish: çarpık, asimetrik

How it is used

Data are 'positively' or 'right-skewed' when the tail goes to the right (income, waiting times) and 'negatively' or 'left-skewed' when it goes to the left (scores on an easy exam). The noun is 'skewness'. Informally, 'skewed' also means unfairly distorted: 'skewed results'.

Example sentences

  1. House prices are heavily skewed, so we log-transformed them before the analysis.

  2. The distribution of exam scores was negatively skewed because most students found the test easy.

Common collocations

  • right-skewed
  • heavily skewed
  • skewed distribution
  • positively skewed
  • skewed to the left
  • distributionThe pattern showing which values a variable takes and how often each one occurs, often pictured as a histogram or a curve.
  • normal distributionA symmetric, bell-shaped distribution in which most values cluster around the mean and become rarer further away from it; its mean, median and mode are equal.
  • medianThe middle value when the data are put in order from smallest to largest; with an even number of values, it is the mean of the two middle ones.
  • meanThe sum of all the values divided by the number of values; the usual 'average' that describes the centre of a set of numbers.
  • histogramA chart of touching bars showing how many observations of a numeric variable fall into each interval, called a bin.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Probability Distributions

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: