To:  sbaker@odu.edu

From:  Thomas Meyer
tmeyer@ph.vccs.edu
276 656-0283
Patrick Henry Community College

Subject:  Statistics - w/  Dr.Spencer Baker - Homework Assignment #1, Ch 4 - Problem 16, page112.

Date: February 9, 2004

Question:

When classifying distributions in terms of kurtosis, the distributions fall into one of three categories:
platykurtic;  mesokurtic; and leptokurtic.  Define each of these categories and draw a histogram that illustrates each category.

Answer:

Platykurtic refers to a rather flat distribution with not much more frequency in its center, and lots of frequency in the tails.

Mesokurtic refers to a bell-shaped distribution similar in shape to the normal curve.

Leptokurtic refers to a distribution with high frequency in its center and not many outlyers, such that frequency in the tails is much closer to the horizontal axis.

Examples of these are being sent as a jpeg attached to an email.  If these three kinds of histograms had an infinite number of intervals, they would take on the shapes given on page 106 of the text in Figure 4-3.

filename: StatHW1Ch4Prob16page112TomMeyer.doc

Tom Meyer

Thomas Meyer