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After collecting a sample my data is positively skewed, what does this show? I have collected data on the price of books and I have found my data to be positive skewed however I am not sure what this actually shows.

gung - Reinstate Monica
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user108172
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1 Answers1

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Assuming that your data is from a normal distribution, it means the average price of books is more than the median price of books. In other words, more than half of books are priced lower than the average price of books. There are more low priced books than high priced books.

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Brian O'Donnell
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  • statements in the first and second sentences are contradictory. first statement is the correct one. you could express it in other words as: expensiver half of the books are more deviant from the median value, in comparison to cheaper half of the books. – Macond Mar 10 '16 at 22:05
  • From the diagram you can see that there are books priced between the median price and the mean price. That percentage of books is more than zero which when added to the books on the left side of the median (50% of the books), gives a number larger than 50%, which results in a percentage greater than half. – Brian O'Donnell Mar 10 '16 at 22:39
  • true, sorry i must have depicted it conversely in my head – Macond Mar 11 '16 at 00:02
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    Mean > median is indeed likely in positively skewed distributions but not universal. For example, the Poisson is positively skewed but its mean can be less than the median. – Nick Cox Mar 20 '16 at 12:18
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    As per @NickCox's comment, this answer is misleading. – Stephan Kolassa May 12 '16 at 10:55