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A simple bimodal distribution, in this case a mixture of two normal distributions with the same variance but different means. The figure shows the probability density function (p.d.f.), which is an equally-weighted average of the bell-shaped p.d.f.s of the two normal distributions. If the weights were not equal, the resulting distribution could ...
In probability theory and statistics, the beta distribution is a family of continuous probability distributions defined on the interval [0, 1] or (0, 1) in terms of two positive parameters, denoted by alpha (α) and beta (β), that appear as exponents of the variable and its complement to 1, respectively, and control the shape of the distribution.
Many textbooks teach a rule of thumb stating that the mean is right of the median under right skew, and left of the median under left skew. This rule fails with surprising frequency. It can fail in multimodal distributions, or in distributions where one tail is long but the other is heavy. Most commonly, though, the rule fails in discrete ...
In a histogram, each bin is for a different range of values, so altogether the histogram illustrates the distribution of values. But in a bar chart, each bar is for a different category of observations (e.g., each bar might be for a different population), so altogether the bar chart can be used to compare different categories.
Symmetry: a property of some distributions in which the portion of the distribution to the left of a specific value (usually the median) is a mirror image of the portion to its right. Skewness: a measure of the extent to which a pmf or pdf "leans" to one side of its mean. The third standardized moment of the distribution.
Normal probability plot of a sample from a right-skewed distribution – it has an inverted C shape. Histogram of a sample from a right-skewed distribution – it looks unimodal and skewed right. This is a sample of size 50 from a uniform distribution, plotted as both a histogram, and a normal probability plot.
It is customary to transform data logarithmically to fit symmetrical distributions (like the normal and logistic) to data obeying a distribution that is positively skewed (i.e. skew to the right, with mean > mode, and with a right hand tail that is longer than the left hand tail), see lognormal distribution and the loglogistic distribution. A ...
A simple bimodal distribution. Figure 3. A bimodal distribution. Note that only the largest peak would correspond to a mode in the strict sense of the definition of mode. In statistics, a unimodal probability distribution or unimodal distribution is a probability distribution which has a single peak.