8.2 Skewed Right Distributions

A distribution is called skewed right if, as in the histogram above, the right tail (larger values) is much longer than the left tail (small values). Note that in a skewed right distribution, the bulk of the observations are small/medium, with a few observations that are much larger than the rest. An example of a real-life variable that has a skewed right distribution is salary. Most people earn in the low/medium range of salaries, with a few exceptions (CEOs, professional athletes etc.) that are distributed along a large range (long “tail”) of higher values.