Graphically,
The center of a distribution is located at the median of the distribution.
The spread of a distribution refers to the variability of the data.
Shape
The shape of a distribution is described by the following characteristics.
- Symmetry. When it is graphed, a symmetric distribution can be divided at the center so that each half is a mirror image of the other.
- Number of peaks. Distributions can have few or many peaks. Distributions with one clear peak are called unimodal, and distributions with two clear peaks are called bimodal. When a symmetric distribution has a single peak at the center, it is referred to as bell-shaped.
- Skewness. When they are displayed graphically, some distributions have many more observations on one side of the graph than the other. Distributions with fewer observations on the right (toward higher values) are said to be skewed right; and distributions with fewer observations on the left (toward lower values) are said to be skewed left.
- Uniform. When the observations in a set of data are equally spread across the range of the distribution, the distribution is called a uniform distribution. A uniform distribution has no clear peaks.
Here are some examples of distributions and shapes.
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