AI engineering glossary · Probability
What is skewness?
Skewness (also called Skew): A measure of how lopsided a distribution is around its mean. Positive skew means a long tail to the right, negative skew means a long tail to the left, and zero suggests symmetry. It is based on the third standardised moment.
Skewness: an example
Household incomes are usually right-skewed: most are modest, with a few very large ones stretching the right tail.
Related terms
More Probability terms
- Standard deviation
- Standard normal distribution
- Stationary distribution
- Stratified sampling
- Survivorship bias
- Systematic sampling
- Transition matrix
- Uniform distribution
Where you learn it
Skewness is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.