the state or quality of flatness or peakedness of the curve describing a frequency distribution in the region about its mode.
Origin
1900-05; irregular transliteration of Greekkýrtōsis curvature. See cyrtosis
Examples from the web for kurtosis
There is a kurtosis measure, a fourth moment as standard deviation is a second moment, for this variation.
kurtosis is a measure of the peakedness of the distribution.
British Dictionary definitions for kurtosis
kurtosis
/kəˈtəʊsɪs/
noun
1.
(statistics) a measure of the concentration of a distribution around its mean, esp the statistic B2 = m4/m2² where m2 and m4 are respectively the second and fourth moment of the distribution around the mean. In a normal distribution B2 = 3 See also platykurtic, mesokurtic, leptokurticCompare skewness
Word Origin
from Greek: curvature, from kurtos arched
kurtosis in Science
kurtosis
(kər-tō'sĭs) The general form or a quantity indicative of the general form of a statistical frequency curve near the mean of the distribution.