I'm taking an undergrad business stat. course. The prof. gave us a formula to calculate the coefficient of skewness:
3(mean - median)/(std. dev ) And told us that the formula that excel uses to calculate skewness is different/wrong. I did a little digging to try and understand why Excel would use a non-standard formula. The only equation that I found which came close to what my prof. offered up was Pearson's second coef. of skewness which is: 3[mean] - [median] / (std. dev.) Two questions, is the formula my prof. gave me valid, and why wouldn't I use the Excel calculation for skewness? Is the formula I was given more applicable to business statistics than what Excel uses? Thanks for helping the statistcally insignificant. -Joe . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
