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Q: What is purpose of kurtosis?
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What does the term kurtosis mean?

The Greek word "kurtosis", when translated to English, means the probability theory of any measure of the "peakedness" of a real valued random variable.


Is kurtosis equal to zero?

It can be negative, zero or positive.


What is the kurtosis of a normal distribution?

For N(0, 1) it is 3.


What are the differences between a platykurtic a mesokurtic and a leptokurtic distribution?

The kurtosis of a distribution is defined as the fourth central moment divided by the square of the second central moment. Unfortunately, this browser converts Greek characters to the Roman alphabet so I cannot use standard forms of equations but: Suppose that for a random variable X, E(X) = m (mu) and E[(X - E(X))2] = V = s2 (sigma-squared) then Kurtosis = E[(X - E(X))4]/s4. Excess Kurtosis is then Kurtosis - 3. If excess kurtosis < 0 the distribution is platykurtic. They have a peak that is lower than the Normal: the peak is flat and broad. The tails of the distribution are narrow. Uniform distributions are platykurtic. A mesokurtic distibution has excess kurtosis = 0. The Gaussian (Normal) distribution - whatever its parameters - is mesokurtic. The binomial with probability of success close to 1/2 is also considered to be mesokurtic. If excess kurtosis is > 0 the distribution is leptokurtic. Leptokurtic distributions have a high and narrow peak. A good example is the Student's t distribution.


What are the formulas in probability?

There are many, many formulae:for different probability distribution functions,for cumulative distribution functions,for moment generating functions,for means, variances, skewness, kurtosis and higher moments.There are many, many formulae:for different probability distribution functions,for cumulative distribution functions,for moment generating functions,for means, variances, skewness, kurtosis and higher moments.There are many, many formulae:for different probability distribution functions,for cumulative distribution functions,for moment generating functions,for means, variances, skewness, kurtosis and higher moments.There are many, many formulae:for different probability distribution functions,for cumulative distribution functions,for moment generating functions,for means, variances, skewness, kurtosis and higher moments.