Contents - Index


Moments of a Distribution

The first four moments of a distribution are:
  • Average - measures the location of the distribution.
  • Standard Deviation - measures the width of the distribution.  Referred to as the scale parameter.
  • Skewness - measures the symmetry of the distribution.  Referred to as the first shape parameter.
  • Kurtosis - measure of the heaviness of the tails and peakedness of the center of a distribution.  Referred to as the second shape parameter.

    Different distributions with the same moments will have similar density functions and behave nearly identical.