Characteristics of Skewness and Kurtosis

In statistical analysis, understanding the characteristics of a distribution is essential. Two important measures of a distribution's shape are skewness and kurtosis. Skewness indicates the degree of asymmetry of a distribution, while kurtosis measures the heaviness of the tails relative to a normal distribution.

A left-skewed distribution (negative skew) has a longer tail on the left side. Conversely, a right-skewed distribution (positive skew) has a longer tail on the right side. Kurtosis can be classified into three categories: mesokurtic (normal distribution), leptokurtic (higher peak and fatter tails), and platykurtic (lower peak and thinner tails).

Consider a distribution of returns for a particular investment that has a skewness of -1.5 and a kurtosis of 4. Based on these values, how would you characterize this distribution?