The shape of any distribution can be described by its various ‘moments’. The first four are: (1) The mean, which indicates the central tendency of a distribution; (2) The second moment is the variance, which indicates the width or deviation; (3) The third moment is the skewness, which indicates any asymmetric ‘leaning’ to either left or right; (4) The fourth moment is the Kurtosis, which indicates the degree of central ‘peakedness’ or, equivalently, the ‘fatness’ of the outer tails.
MOMENTS [OF A STATISTICAL DISTRIBUTION]
