This allows you to analyze a table in a spreadsheet and determine several things, including something called "Kurtosis".
This really aroused my interest for two reasons: (1) I have a good friend named Kurt. He let me ride his off-road Segway. The word reminds me of Kurt because it has the letters "kurt" in it, and (2) I've never heard of such a thing as "Kurtosis". What is it? I am really curious.
Here's the definition I found on wikipedia:
In probability theory and statistics, kurtosis (from the Greek word κυρτός, kyrtos or kurtos, meaning bulging) is a measure of the "peakedness" of the probability distribution of a real-valued random variable. Higher kurtosis means more of the variance is the result of infrequent extreme deviations, as opposed to frequent modestly sized deviations.What????? My curiosity is slowly evaporating in the heat of this "over my head" feeling that's coming over me.
I'm going back to my Excel 2007 lesson now.
It's simple. Let's take my checkbook. When I was married my checkbook had frequent modestly sized deviations, a very low kurtosis. But, if my checkbook suddenly fell out of my pocket, and my X-wife got a hold of it, suddenly after a day of impusilve random shopping, the kurtosis of my account would reach "peakedness" and increase my probability distribution. Piece of cake. ;-)
ReplyDeleteGooz~ ha ha! Nothing like a simple illustration to make an intimidating (to me) subject appear as clear as crystal. I still don't really understand "kurtosis" but I have a satisfied feeling now, just as if I did. (I'm nodding my head like a baptist parishioner... "Uh huh!" "Mmmm Hmmm" "Yes!")
ReplyDelete