Question

A recent General Social Survey asked respondents how many close friends they had. For a sample of 1467 people, the mean was 7.4 and the standard deviation was 11.0. The distribution had a median of 5 and a mode of 4.Based on these statistics, would you expect this distribution to be bell-shaped, left skewed, or right skewed?

Answer 1

Answer:

This distribution should be expected to be right skewed.

Step-by-step explanation:

Pearson skewness:

The skewness of a data set is given by the subtraction of the mean by the mode, divided by the standard deviation.

If the coefficient is positive, the distribution is right skewed.

If the coefficient is negative, the distribution is left skewed.

If the coefficient is sufficiently close to 0(+/- 0.05), the distribution is bell shaped.

In this question:

Mean 7.4, mode 4, standard deviation 11

(7.4-4)/11 = 3.4/11 = 0.31

Positive coefficient, so right skewed.