Thanks for that link to the article on L distributions.  I don't think I quite 
got an L.  Here's what the data looked like:

http://i.imgur.com/HtOCRc1.jpg

But still, I'll take a look at the article since it addresses what to do with 
non-normal distributions.


Michael A. Britt, Ph.D.
[email protected]
http://www.ThePsychFiles.com
Twitter: @mbritt

On Nov 11, 2013, at 1:29 PM, David Epstein <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Mon, 11 Nov 2013, Michael Britt went:
> 
>> I did a survey which asked respondents how satisfied they are in
>> their current (romantic) relationship on a 1=10 point scale (where
>> 10="very satisfied).  While there was some variation, not
>> surprisingly, the results are strongly negatively skewed.  That makes
>> sense - most people are probably satisfied with their relationships
>> or they would leave the other person
> 
> So you've got yourself the mirror image of one of these:
> 
> <http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1983-09462-001>
> 
> |The insidious L-shaped distribution.
> |Bradley, James V.
> |Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, Vol 20(2), Aug 1982, 85-88.
> |
> |L-shaped distributions are probably more prevalent than generally
> |realized. They are highly conducive to nonrobustness of
> |normality-assuming statistical tests, and strongly resist
> |transformation to normality. The thinner the tail of the
> |distribution, the more unlikely it is that its L-shapedness will be
> |detected by inspecting a sample drawn from it. Yet, as the tail of an
> |L-shaped distribution becomes increasingly shallow, its skewness and
> |kurtosis depart increasingly from their "normal-distribution" values,
> |and the distribution becomes increasingly conducive to drastic
> |nonrobustness. Worse, a fairly common type of experimental situation
> |in psychological research produces shallow-tailed L-shaped
> |distributions.
> 
> If you do a search on statistical techniques for "zero-inflated
> continuous [or semicontinuous] data," you might be able to apply them
> to your "ten-inflated data."
> 
> --David Epstein
>  [email protected]
> 
> 
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