Article: The Complications of the Fourth Central Moment.

This article illustrates the additional complications in the mathematical formulas involving the fourth central moment in comparison with those involving the first moment, the second central moment, and the third central moment.

KEY WORDS: Central moments; Cumulants; Descriptive statistics; Moments; Unbiased estimation.

1. INTRODUCTION

In an introductory statistics course, moments and central moments of a random variable are interpreted descriptively. The first moment (the mean) and the second central moment (the variance) are introduced to describe, respectively, the location and the dispersion of a random variable. Then the third and the ...

Related newspaper, magazine, and journal articles:

 
 
Newsweek Harper's Magazine The Washington Post Chicago Tribune Crain's Chicago Business PRNewswire Pediatric News The Nation Advertising Age The Economist (US) A FREE trial gives you access to over 80 million articles! Access over 6,500 publications with a FREE trial!