English

Bounded Distributions place Limits on Skewness and Larger Moments

Applications 2024-02-14 v2 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

Distributions of strictly positive numbers are common and can be characterized by standard statistical measures such as mean, standard deviation, and skewness. We demonstrate that for these distributions the skewness D3D_3 is bounded from below by a function of the coefficient of variation (CoV) δ\delta as D3δ1/δD_3 \ge \delta-1/\delta. The results are extended to any distribution that is bounded with minimum value xminx_{\rm min} and/or bounded with maximum value xmaxx_{\rm max}. We build on the results to provide bounds for kurtosis D4D_4, and conjecture analogous bounds exists for higher statistical moments.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.05006,
  title  = {Bounded Distributions place Limits on Skewness and Larger Moments},
  author = {David J Meer and Eric R. Weeks},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.05006},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

14 pages, 2 figures. Awaiting publication in PLoS One