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Re: Definition of skewness [message #45112 is a reply to message #45111] Fri, 12 August 2005 07:01 Go to previous message
K. Bowman is currently offline  K. Bowman
Messages: 330
Registered: May 2000
Senior Member
In article <1123799104.723233.99170@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
"envi35@yahoo.ca" <envi35@yahoo.ca> wrote:

> Hi there,
> I want to use the skewness of some data series to do a rough
> classification. But I'm confused with the IDL online help about the
> SKEWNESS function: Skewness determines whether a distribution is
> symmetric about its MAXIMUM. While in Microsoft Excel, it says Skewness
> is a characterization of the degree of asymmetry of a distribution
> around its MEAN.
> It seems that the MEAN is right according to the algorithm of the
> skewness function in IDL, why the online help of IDL says MAXIMUM? Is
> this a typo or else? Could anybody knows more about statistics give me
> some help?
>
> Thanks, Jenny

The documentation is incorrect. Skewness is related to the third moment about
the mean.

It would be extremely helpful if the IDL manuals included the mathematical
expressions for quantities such as this, but unless they receive many requests,
RSI is unlikely to update the docs.

Regards, Ken Bowman

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