Is a distribution that is normal, but highly skewed, considered Gaussian? The Next CEO of Stack OverflowIs normality testing 'essentially useless'?What is the difference between zero-inflated and hurdle models?If my histogram shows a bell-shaped curve, can I say my data is normally distributed?How do I identify the “Long Tail” portion of my distribution?Skewed but bell-shaped still considered as normal distribution for ANOVA?Which Distribution Does the Data Point Belong to?Skewness - why is this distribution right skewed?log transform vs. resamplingIs it valid to remove the overhead of finding the current time for a computer program this way?Histograms for severely skewed dataWhat would the distribution of time spent per day on a given site look like?Distinguish between underlying Distribution and data shape in data transforming?Using bootstrap to estimate the 95th percentile and confidence interval for skewed data

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Is a distribution that is normal, but highly skewed, considered Gaussian?



The Next CEO of Stack OverflowIs normality testing 'essentially useless'?What is the difference between zero-inflated and hurdle models?If my histogram shows a bell-shaped curve, can I say my data is normally distributed?How do I identify the “Long Tail” portion of my distribution?Skewed but bell-shaped still considered as normal distribution for ANOVA?Which Distribution Does the Data Point Belong to?Skewness - why is this distribution right skewed?log transform vs. resamplingIs it valid to remove the overhead of finding the current time for a computer program this way?Histograms for severely skewed dataWhat would the distribution of time spent per day on a given site look like?Distinguish between underlying Distribution and data shape in data transforming?Using bootstrap to estimate the 95th percentile and confidence interval for skewed data










8












$begingroup$


I have this question: What do you think the distribution of time spent per day on YouTube looks like?



My answer is that it is probably normally distributed and highly left skewed. I expect there is one mode where most users spend around some average time and then a long right tail since some users are overwhelming power users.



Is that a fair answer? Is there a better word for that distribution?










share|cite|improve this question











$endgroup$







  • 3




    $begingroup$
    As some answers mention but do not emphasise, skewness is named informally for the longer tail if there is one, so right-skewed if a longer right tail. Left and right as used in this context both presuppose a display following a convention that magnitude is shown on the hoirizontal axis. If that sounds too obvious, consider displays in the Earth and environmental sciences in which the magnitude is height or depth and shown vertically. Small print: some measures of skewness can be zero even if a distribution is skewed geometrically.
    $endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    yesterday











  • $begingroup$
    Total time per day for all users? or time per day per person? If the latter, then surely there's a moderately big spike at 0, in which case you probably need a 'spike and slab' style distribution with a Dirac delta at 0.
    $endgroup$
    – innisfree
    23 hours ago











  • $begingroup$
    "Normal" is synonymous with "Gaussian", and Gaussian distributions, also called normal distributions, are not skewed.
    $endgroup$
    – Michael Hardy
    4 hours ago















8












$begingroup$


I have this question: What do you think the distribution of time spent per day on YouTube looks like?



My answer is that it is probably normally distributed and highly left skewed. I expect there is one mode where most users spend around some average time and then a long right tail since some users are overwhelming power users.



Is that a fair answer? Is there a better word for that distribution?










share|cite|improve this question











$endgroup$







  • 3




    $begingroup$
    As some answers mention but do not emphasise, skewness is named informally for the longer tail if there is one, so right-skewed if a longer right tail. Left and right as used in this context both presuppose a display following a convention that magnitude is shown on the hoirizontal axis. If that sounds too obvious, consider displays in the Earth and environmental sciences in which the magnitude is height or depth and shown vertically. Small print: some measures of skewness can be zero even if a distribution is skewed geometrically.
    $endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    yesterday











  • $begingroup$
    Total time per day for all users? or time per day per person? If the latter, then surely there's a moderately big spike at 0, in which case you probably need a 'spike and slab' style distribution with a Dirac delta at 0.
    $endgroup$
    – innisfree
    23 hours ago











  • $begingroup$
    "Normal" is synonymous with "Gaussian", and Gaussian distributions, also called normal distributions, are not skewed.
    $endgroup$
    – Michael Hardy
    4 hours ago













8












8








8


1



$begingroup$


I have this question: What do you think the distribution of time spent per day on YouTube looks like?



My answer is that it is probably normally distributed and highly left skewed. I expect there is one mode where most users spend around some average time and then a long right tail since some users are overwhelming power users.



Is that a fair answer? Is there a better word for that distribution?










share|cite|improve this question











$endgroup$




I have this question: What do you think the distribution of time spent per day on YouTube looks like?



My answer is that it is probably normally distributed and highly left skewed. I expect there is one mode where most users spend around some average time and then a long right tail since some users are overwhelming power users.



Is that a fair answer? Is there a better word for that distribution?







distributions normal-distribution skewness skew-normal






share|cite|improve this question















share|cite|improve this question













share|cite|improve this question




share|cite|improve this question








edited yesterday









Nick Cox

39.1k587131




39.1k587131










asked 2 days ago









CauderCauder

8317




8317







  • 3




    $begingroup$
    As some answers mention but do not emphasise, skewness is named informally for the longer tail if there is one, so right-skewed if a longer right tail. Left and right as used in this context both presuppose a display following a convention that magnitude is shown on the hoirizontal axis. If that sounds too obvious, consider displays in the Earth and environmental sciences in which the magnitude is height or depth and shown vertically. Small print: some measures of skewness can be zero even if a distribution is skewed geometrically.
    $endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    yesterday











  • $begingroup$
    Total time per day for all users? or time per day per person? If the latter, then surely there's a moderately big spike at 0, in which case you probably need a 'spike and slab' style distribution with a Dirac delta at 0.
    $endgroup$
    – innisfree
    23 hours ago











  • $begingroup$
    "Normal" is synonymous with "Gaussian", and Gaussian distributions, also called normal distributions, are not skewed.
    $endgroup$
    – Michael Hardy
    4 hours ago












  • 3




    $begingroup$
    As some answers mention but do not emphasise, skewness is named informally for the longer tail if there is one, so right-skewed if a longer right tail. Left and right as used in this context both presuppose a display following a convention that magnitude is shown on the hoirizontal axis. If that sounds too obvious, consider displays in the Earth and environmental sciences in which the magnitude is height or depth and shown vertically. Small print: some measures of skewness can be zero even if a distribution is skewed geometrically.
    $endgroup$
    – Nick Cox
    yesterday











  • $begingroup$
    Total time per day for all users? or time per day per person? If the latter, then surely there's a moderately big spike at 0, in which case you probably need a 'spike and slab' style distribution with a Dirac delta at 0.
    $endgroup$
    – innisfree
    23 hours ago











  • $begingroup$
    "Normal" is synonymous with "Gaussian", and Gaussian distributions, also called normal distributions, are not skewed.
    $endgroup$
    – Michael Hardy
    4 hours ago







3




3




$begingroup$
As some answers mention but do not emphasise, skewness is named informally for the longer tail if there is one, so right-skewed if a longer right tail. Left and right as used in this context both presuppose a display following a convention that magnitude is shown on the hoirizontal axis. If that sounds too obvious, consider displays in the Earth and environmental sciences in which the magnitude is height or depth and shown vertically. Small print: some measures of skewness can be zero even if a distribution is skewed geometrically.
$endgroup$
– Nick Cox
yesterday





$begingroup$
As some answers mention but do not emphasise, skewness is named informally for the longer tail if there is one, so right-skewed if a longer right tail. Left and right as used in this context both presuppose a display following a convention that magnitude is shown on the hoirizontal axis. If that sounds too obvious, consider displays in the Earth and environmental sciences in which the magnitude is height or depth and shown vertically. Small print: some measures of skewness can be zero even if a distribution is skewed geometrically.
$endgroup$
– Nick Cox
yesterday













$begingroup$
Total time per day for all users? or time per day per person? If the latter, then surely there's a moderately big spike at 0, in which case you probably need a 'spike and slab' style distribution with a Dirac delta at 0.
$endgroup$
– innisfree
23 hours ago





$begingroup$
Total time per day for all users? or time per day per person? If the latter, then surely there's a moderately big spike at 0, in which case you probably need a 'spike and slab' style distribution with a Dirac delta at 0.
$endgroup$
– innisfree
23 hours ago













$begingroup$
"Normal" is synonymous with "Gaussian", and Gaussian distributions, also called normal distributions, are not skewed.
$endgroup$
– Michael Hardy
4 hours ago




$begingroup$
"Normal" is synonymous with "Gaussian", and Gaussian distributions, also called normal distributions, are not skewed.
$endgroup$
– Michael Hardy
4 hours ago










9 Answers
9






active

oldest

votes


















11












$begingroup$

A fraction per day is certainly not negative. This rules out the normal distribution, which has probability mass over the entire real axis - in particular over the negative half.



Power law distributions are often used to model things like income distributions, sizes of cities etc. They are nonnegative and typically highly skewed. These would be the first I would try in modeling time spent watching YouTube. (Or monitoring CrossValidated questions.)



More information on power laws can be found here or here, or in our power-law tag.






share|cite|improve this answer









$endgroup$








  • 12




    $begingroup$
    You're completely correct that normal distributions have support on the real line. And yet...they're no an awful model for some strictly positive qualities, like adults' height or weight, where the mean and variance are such that the negative values are very unlikely under the model.
    $endgroup$
    – Matt Krause
    2 days ago






  • 1




    $begingroup$
    @MattKrause That's actually a great question - is there a same probability I will be '10 cm above or below the mean height' or '10 percent above or below the mean height'? Only the first case could warrant normal distribution.
    $endgroup$
    – Tomáš Kafka
    17 hours ago










  • $begingroup$
    @MattKrause: I completely agree, in a general sense. Yet, the present question is about the proportion of daily time spent watching YouTube. We don't have any data, but I would be extremely surprised if the distribution was even remotely symmetric.
    $endgroup$
    – Stephan Kolassa
    14 hours ago


















37












$begingroup$

A distribution that is normal is not highly skewed. That is a contradiction. Normally distributed variables have skew = 0.






share|cite|improve this answer









$endgroup$








  • 1




    $begingroup$
    What is a better way to describe the distribution? Is there a word for that type of distribution where it centers around a mode and then has a long tail?
    $endgroup$
    – Cauder
    2 days ago






  • 11




    $begingroup$
    Unimodal and skewed is as close as I can come...
    $endgroup$
    – jbowman
    2 days ago






  • 8




    $begingroup$
    As an aside, it's just really incredible that people give their time to help other people get better at this stuff. I know it goes without saying, but it's so cool what you both do!
    $endgroup$
    – Cauder
    2 days ago






  • 5




    $begingroup$
    Yes, but it's worth clarifying that that statement pertains to the normally distributed population. A sample drawn from that population can be very skewed.
    $endgroup$
    – gung
    2 days ago










  • $begingroup$
    When the skew value is small ("small" being decided by the people dealing with the stats in question), you can still treat the population as normal, albeit with minor error as a result.
    $endgroup$
    – Carl Witthoft
    12 hours ago


















15












$begingroup$

If it has long right tail, then it's right skewed.



enter image description here



It can't be a normal distribution since skew !=0, it's perhaps a unimodal skew normal distribution:



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skew_normal_distribution






share|cite|improve this answer








New contributor




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$endgroup$




















    9












    $begingroup$

    It could be a log-normal distribution. As mentioned here:




    Users' dwell time on online articles (jokes, news etc.) follows a log-normal distribution.




    The reference given is: Yin, Peifeng; Luo, Ping; Lee, Wang-Chien; Wang, Min (2013). Silence is also evidence: interpreting dwell time for recommendation from psychological perspective. ACM International Conference on KDD.






    share|cite|improve this answer









    $endgroup$




















      5












      $begingroup$

      The gamma distribution could be a good candidate to describe this kind of distribution over nonnegative, right-skewed data. See the green line in the image here:
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_distribution






      share|cite|improve this answer









      $endgroup$




















        3












        $begingroup$

        "Normal" and "Gaussian" mean exactly the same thing. As other answers explain, the distribution you're talking about is not normal/Gaussian, because that distribution assigns probabilities to every value on the real line, whereas your distribution only exists between $0$ and $24$.






        share|cite|improve this answer









        $endgroup$




















          2












          $begingroup$

          In the case at hand, since the time spent per day is bound from $0$ to $1$ (if quantified as a fraction of the day), distributions that are unbounded above (e.g. Pareto, skew-normal, Gamma, log-normal) won't work, but Beta would.






          share|cite|improve this answer









          $endgroup$




















            2












            $begingroup$

            How about a hurdle model?



            A hurdle model has two parts. The first is Bernoulli experiment that determines whether you use YouTube at all. If you don't, then your usage time is obviously zero and you're done. If you do, you "pass that hurdle", then the usage time comes from some other strictly positive distribution.



            A closely related concept are zero-inflated models. These are meant to deal with a situation where we observe a bunch of zeros, but can't distinguish between always-zeros and sometimes-zeros. For example, consider the number of cigarettes that a person smokes each day. For non-smokers, that number is always zero, but some smokers may not smoke on a given day (out of cigarettes? on a long flight?). Unlike the hurdle model, the "smoker" distribution here should include zero, but these counts are 'inflated' by the non-smokers' contribution too.






            share|cite|improve this answer









            $endgroup$




















              1












              $begingroup$

              "Is there a better word for that distribution?"



              There's a worthwhile distinction here between using words to describe the properties of the distribution, versus trying to find a "name" for the distribution so that you can identify it as (approximately) an instance of a particular standard distribution: one for which a formula or statistical tables might exist for its distribution function, and for which you could estimate its parameters. In this latter case, you are likely using the named distribution, e.g. "normal/Gaussian" (the two terms are generally synonymous), as a model that captures some of the key features of your data, rather than claiming the population your data is drawn from exactly follows that theoretical distribution. To slightly misquote George Box, all models are "wrong", but some are useful. If you are thinking about the modelling approach, it is worth considering what features you want to incorporate and how complicated or parsimonious you want your model to be.



              Being positively skewed is an example of describing a property that the distribution has, but doesn't come close to specifying which off-the-shelf distribution is "the" appropriate model. It does rule out some candidates, for example the Gaussian (i.e. normal) distribution has zero skew so will not be appropriate to model your data if the skew is an important feature. There may be other properties of the data that are important to you too, e.g. that it's unimodal (has just one peak) or that it is bounded between 0 and 24 hours (or between 0 and 1, if you are writing it as a fraction of the day), or that there is a probability mass concentrated at zero (since there are people who do not watch youtube at all on a given day). You may also be interested in other properties like the kurtosis. And it is worth bearing in mind that even if your distribution had a "hump" or "bell-curve" shape and had zero or near-zero skew, it doesn't automatically follow that the normal distribution is "correct" for it! On the other hand, even if the population your data is drawn from actually did follow a particular distribution precisely, due to sampling error your dataset may not quite resemble it. Small data sets are likely to be "noisy", and it may be unclear whether certain features you can see, e.g. additional small humps or asymmetric tails, are properties of the underlying population the data was drawn from (and perhaps therefore ought to be incorporated in your model) or whether they are just artefacts from your particular sample (and for modelling purposes should be ignored). If you have a small data set and the skew is close to zero, then it is even plausible the underlying distribution is actually symmetric. The larger your data set and the larger the skewness, the less plausible this becomes — but while you could perform a significance test to see how convincing is the evidence your data provides for skewness in the population it was drawn from, this may be missing the point as to whether a normal (or other zero skew) distribution is appropriate as a model ...



              Which properties of the data really matter for the purposes you are intending to model it? Note that if the skew is reasonably small and you do not care very much about it, even if the underlying population is genuinely skewed, then you might still find the normal distribution a useful model to approximate this true distribution of watching times. But you should check that this doesn't end up making silly predictions. Because a normal distribution has no highest or lowest possible value, then although extremely high or low values become increasingly unlikely, you will always find that your model predicts there is some probability of watching for a negative number of hours per day, or more than 24 hours. This gets more problematic for you if the predicted probability of such impossible events becomes high. If the skewness is so noteworthy you want to capture it as part of your model, then the skew normal distribution may be more appropriate. If you want to capture both skewness and kurtosis, then consider the skewed t. If you want to incorporate the physically possible upper and lower bounds, then consider using the truncated versions of these distributions. Many other probability distributions exist that can be skewed and unimodal (for appropriate parameter choices) such as the F or gamma distributions, and again you can truncate these so they do not predict impossibly high watching times. A beta distribution may be a good choice if you are modelling the fraction of the day spent watching, as this is always bounded between 0 and 1 without further truncation being necessary. If you want to incorporate the concentration of probability at exactly zero due to non-watchers, then consider building in a hurdle model.



              But at the point you are trying to throw in every feature you can identify from your data, and build an ever more sophisticated model, perhaps you should ask yourself why you are doing this? Would there be an advantage to a simpler model, for example it being easier to work with mathematically or having fewer parameters to estimate? If you are concerned that such simplification will leave you unable to capture all of the properties of interest to you, it may well be that no "off-the-shelf" distribution does quite what you want. However, we are not restricted to working with named distributions whose mathematical properties have been elucidated previously. Instead, consider using your data to construct an empirical distribution function. This will capture all the behaviour that was present in your data, but you can no longer give it a name like "normal" or "gamma", nor can you apply mathematical properties that pertain only to a particular distribution. For instance, the "95% of the data lies within 1.96 standard deviations of the mean" rule is for normally distributed data and may not apply to your distribution; though note that some rules apply to all distributions, e.g. Chebyshev's inequality guarantees that at least 75% of your data must lie within two standard deviations of the mean, regardless of the skew. Unfortunately the empirical distribution will also inherit all of the properties of your data set that arose just by sampling error, not just those possessed by the underlying population, so you may find a histogram of your empirical distribution has some humps and dips that the population itself does not — if you want to improve matters, you can try taking a larger sample. You may want to investigate smoothed empirical distribution functions.



              In summary: although the normal distribution has zero skew, the fact your data are skewed doesn't rule out the normal distribution as a useful model, though it does suggest some other distribution may be more appropriate. You should also consider other properties of the data when choosing your model, besides the skew, and consider too the purposes you are going to use the model for. It's safe to say that your true population of watching times does not exactly follow some famous, named distribution, but this does not necessarily mean that such a distribution is doomed to be useless as a model. However, for some purposes you may prefer to just use the empirical distribution itself, rather than to fit a standard distribution to it.






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                9 Answers
                9






                active

                oldest

                votes








                9 Answers
                9






                active

                oldest

                votes









                active

                oldest

                votes






                active

                oldest

                votes









                11












                $begingroup$

                A fraction per day is certainly not negative. This rules out the normal distribution, which has probability mass over the entire real axis - in particular over the negative half.



                Power law distributions are often used to model things like income distributions, sizes of cities etc. They are nonnegative and typically highly skewed. These would be the first I would try in modeling time spent watching YouTube. (Or monitoring CrossValidated questions.)



                More information on power laws can be found here or here, or in our power-law tag.






                share|cite|improve this answer









                $endgroup$








                • 12




                  $begingroup$
                  You're completely correct that normal distributions have support on the real line. And yet...they're no an awful model for some strictly positive qualities, like adults' height or weight, where the mean and variance are such that the negative values are very unlikely under the model.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Matt Krause
                  2 days ago






                • 1




                  $begingroup$
                  @MattKrause That's actually a great question - is there a same probability I will be '10 cm above or below the mean height' or '10 percent above or below the mean height'? Only the first case could warrant normal distribution.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Tomáš Kafka
                  17 hours ago










                • $begingroup$
                  @MattKrause: I completely agree, in a general sense. Yet, the present question is about the proportion of daily time spent watching YouTube. We don't have any data, but I would be extremely surprised if the distribution was even remotely symmetric.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Stephan Kolassa
                  14 hours ago















                11












                $begingroup$

                A fraction per day is certainly not negative. This rules out the normal distribution, which has probability mass over the entire real axis - in particular over the negative half.



                Power law distributions are often used to model things like income distributions, sizes of cities etc. They are nonnegative and typically highly skewed. These would be the first I would try in modeling time spent watching YouTube. (Or monitoring CrossValidated questions.)



                More information on power laws can be found here or here, or in our power-law tag.






                share|cite|improve this answer









                $endgroup$








                • 12




                  $begingroup$
                  You're completely correct that normal distributions have support on the real line. And yet...they're no an awful model for some strictly positive qualities, like adults' height or weight, where the mean and variance are such that the negative values are very unlikely under the model.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Matt Krause
                  2 days ago






                • 1




                  $begingroup$
                  @MattKrause That's actually a great question - is there a same probability I will be '10 cm above or below the mean height' or '10 percent above or below the mean height'? Only the first case could warrant normal distribution.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Tomáš Kafka
                  17 hours ago










                • $begingroup$
                  @MattKrause: I completely agree, in a general sense. Yet, the present question is about the proportion of daily time spent watching YouTube. We don't have any data, but I would be extremely surprised if the distribution was even remotely symmetric.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Stephan Kolassa
                  14 hours ago













                11












                11








                11





                $begingroup$

                A fraction per day is certainly not negative. This rules out the normal distribution, which has probability mass over the entire real axis - in particular over the negative half.



                Power law distributions are often used to model things like income distributions, sizes of cities etc. They are nonnegative and typically highly skewed. These would be the first I would try in modeling time spent watching YouTube. (Or monitoring CrossValidated questions.)



                More information on power laws can be found here or here, or in our power-law tag.






                share|cite|improve this answer









                $endgroup$



                A fraction per day is certainly not negative. This rules out the normal distribution, which has probability mass over the entire real axis - in particular over the negative half.



                Power law distributions are often used to model things like income distributions, sizes of cities etc. They are nonnegative and typically highly skewed. These would be the first I would try in modeling time spent watching YouTube. (Or monitoring CrossValidated questions.)



                More information on power laws can be found here or here, or in our power-law tag.







                share|cite|improve this answer












                share|cite|improve this answer



                share|cite|improve this answer










                answered 2 days ago









                Stephan KolassaStephan Kolassa

                47.3k7100176




                47.3k7100176







                • 12




                  $begingroup$
                  You're completely correct that normal distributions have support on the real line. And yet...they're no an awful model for some strictly positive qualities, like adults' height or weight, where the mean and variance are such that the negative values are very unlikely under the model.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Matt Krause
                  2 days ago






                • 1




                  $begingroup$
                  @MattKrause That's actually a great question - is there a same probability I will be '10 cm above or below the mean height' or '10 percent above or below the mean height'? Only the first case could warrant normal distribution.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Tomáš Kafka
                  17 hours ago










                • $begingroup$
                  @MattKrause: I completely agree, in a general sense. Yet, the present question is about the proportion of daily time spent watching YouTube. We don't have any data, but I would be extremely surprised if the distribution was even remotely symmetric.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Stephan Kolassa
                  14 hours ago












                • 12




                  $begingroup$
                  You're completely correct that normal distributions have support on the real line. And yet...they're no an awful model for some strictly positive qualities, like adults' height or weight, where the mean and variance are such that the negative values are very unlikely under the model.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Matt Krause
                  2 days ago






                • 1




                  $begingroup$
                  @MattKrause That's actually a great question - is there a same probability I will be '10 cm above or below the mean height' or '10 percent above or below the mean height'? Only the first case could warrant normal distribution.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Tomáš Kafka
                  17 hours ago










                • $begingroup$
                  @MattKrause: I completely agree, in a general sense. Yet, the present question is about the proportion of daily time spent watching YouTube. We don't have any data, but I would be extremely surprised if the distribution was even remotely symmetric.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Stephan Kolassa
                  14 hours ago







                12




                12




                $begingroup$
                You're completely correct that normal distributions have support on the real line. And yet...they're no an awful model for some strictly positive qualities, like adults' height or weight, where the mean and variance are such that the negative values are very unlikely under the model.
                $endgroup$
                – Matt Krause
                2 days ago




                $begingroup$
                You're completely correct that normal distributions have support on the real line. And yet...they're no an awful model for some strictly positive qualities, like adults' height or weight, where the mean and variance are such that the negative values are very unlikely under the model.
                $endgroup$
                – Matt Krause
                2 days ago




                1




                1




                $begingroup$
                @MattKrause That's actually a great question - is there a same probability I will be '10 cm above or below the mean height' or '10 percent above or below the mean height'? Only the first case could warrant normal distribution.
                $endgroup$
                – Tomáš Kafka
                17 hours ago




                $begingroup$
                @MattKrause That's actually a great question - is there a same probability I will be '10 cm above or below the mean height' or '10 percent above or below the mean height'? Only the first case could warrant normal distribution.
                $endgroup$
                – Tomáš Kafka
                17 hours ago












                $begingroup$
                @MattKrause: I completely agree, in a general sense. Yet, the present question is about the proportion of daily time spent watching YouTube. We don't have any data, but I would be extremely surprised if the distribution was even remotely symmetric.
                $endgroup$
                – Stephan Kolassa
                14 hours ago




                $begingroup$
                @MattKrause: I completely agree, in a general sense. Yet, the present question is about the proportion of daily time spent watching YouTube. We don't have any data, but I would be extremely surprised if the distribution was even remotely symmetric.
                $endgroup$
                – Stephan Kolassa
                14 hours ago













                37












                $begingroup$

                A distribution that is normal is not highly skewed. That is a contradiction. Normally distributed variables have skew = 0.






                share|cite|improve this answer









                $endgroup$








                • 1




                  $begingroup$
                  What is a better way to describe the distribution? Is there a word for that type of distribution where it centers around a mode and then has a long tail?
                  $endgroup$
                  – Cauder
                  2 days ago






                • 11




                  $begingroup$
                  Unimodal and skewed is as close as I can come...
                  $endgroup$
                  – jbowman
                  2 days ago






                • 8




                  $begingroup$
                  As an aside, it's just really incredible that people give their time to help other people get better at this stuff. I know it goes without saying, but it's so cool what you both do!
                  $endgroup$
                  – Cauder
                  2 days ago






                • 5




                  $begingroup$
                  Yes, but it's worth clarifying that that statement pertains to the normally distributed population. A sample drawn from that population can be very skewed.
                  $endgroup$
                  – gung
                  2 days ago










                • $begingroup$
                  When the skew value is small ("small" being decided by the people dealing with the stats in question), you can still treat the population as normal, albeit with minor error as a result.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Carl Witthoft
                  12 hours ago















                37












                $begingroup$

                A distribution that is normal is not highly skewed. That is a contradiction. Normally distributed variables have skew = 0.






                share|cite|improve this answer









                $endgroup$








                • 1




                  $begingroup$
                  What is a better way to describe the distribution? Is there a word for that type of distribution where it centers around a mode and then has a long tail?
                  $endgroup$
                  – Cauder
                  2 days ago






                • 11




                  $begingroup$
                  Unimodal and skewed is as close as I can come...
                  $endgroup$
                  – jbowman
                  2 days ago






                • 8




                  $begingroup$
                  As an aside, it's just really incredible that people give their time to help other people get better at this stuff. I know it goes without saying, but it's so cool what you both do!
                  $endgroup$
                  – Cauder
                  2 days ago






                • 5




                  $begingroup$
                  Yes, but it's worth clarifying that that statement pertains to the normally distributed population. A sample drawn from that population can be very skewed.
                  $endgroup$
                  – gung
                  2 days ago










                • $begingroup$
                  When the skew value is small ("small" being decided by the people dealing with the stats in question), you can still treat the population as normal, albeit with minor error as a result.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Carl Witthoft
                  12 hours ago













                37












                37








                37





                $begingroup$

                A distribution that is normal is not highly skewed. That is a contradiction. Normally distributed variables have skew = 0.






                share|cite|improve this answer









                $endgroup$



                A distribution that is normal is not highly skewed. That is a contradiction. Normally distributed variables have skew = 0.







                share|cite|improve this answer












                share|cite|improve this answer



                share|cite|improve this answer










                answered 2 days ago









                Peter FlomPeter Flom

                76.8k12109214




                76.8k12109214







                • 1




                  $begingroup$
                  What is a better way to describe the distribution? Is there a word for that type of distribution where it centers around a mode and then has a long tail?
                  $endgroup$
                  – Cauder
                  2 days ago






                • 11




                  $begingroup$
                  Unimodal and skewed is as close as I can come...
                  $endgroup$
                  – jbowman
                  2 days ago






                • 8




                  $begingroup$
                  As an aside, it's just really incredible that people give their time to help other people get better at this stuff. I know it goes without saying, but it's so cool what you both do!
                  $endgroup$
                  – Cauder
                  2 days ago






                • 5




                  $begingroup$
                  Yes, but it's worth clarifying that that statement pertains to the normally distributed population. A sample drawn from that population can be very skewed.
                  $endgroup$
                  – gung
                  2 days ago










                • $begingroup$
                  When the skew value is small ("small" being decided by the people dealing with the stats in question), you can still treat the population as normal, albeit with minor error as a result.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Carl Witthoft
                  12 hours ago












                • 1




                  $begingroup$
                  What is a better way to describe the distribution? Is there a word for that type of distribution where it centers around a mode and then has a long tail?
                  $endgroup$
                  – Cauder
                  2 days ago






                • 11




                  $begingroup$
                  Unimodal and skewed is as close as I can come...
                  $endgroup$
                  – jbowman
                  2 days ago






                • 8




                  $begingroup$
                  As an aside, it's just really incredible that people give their time to help other people get better at this stuff. I know it goes without saying, but it's so cool what you both do!
                  $endgroup$
                  – Cauder
                  2 days ago






                • 5




                  $begingroup$
                  Yes, but it's worth clarifying that that statement pertains to the normally distributed population. A sample drawn from that population can be very skewed.
                  $endgroup$
                  – gung
                  2 days ago










                • $begingroup$
                  When the skew value is small ("small" being decided by the people dealing with the stats in question), you can still treat the population as normal, albeit with minor error as a result.
                  $endgroup$
                  – Carl Witthoft
                  12 hours ago







                1




                1




                $begingroup$
                What is a better way to describe the distribution? Is there a word for that type of distribution where it centers around a mode and then has a long tail?
                $endgroup$
                – Cauder
                2 days ago




                $begingroup$
                What is a better way to describe the distribution? Is there a word for that type of distribution where it centers around a mode and then has a long tail?
                $endgroup$
                – Cauder
                2 days ago




                11




                11




                $begingroup$
                Unimodal and skewed is as close as I can come...
                $endgroup$
                – jbowman
                2 days ago




                $begingroup$
                Unimodal and skewed is as close as I can come...
                $endgroup$
                – jbowman
                2 days ago




                8




                8




                $begingroup$
                As an aside, it's just really incredible that people give their time to help other people get better at this stuff. I know it goes without saying, but it's so cool what you both do!
                $endgroup$
                – Cauder
                2 days ago




                $begingroup$
                As an aside, it's just really incredible that people give their time to help other people get better at this stuff. I know it goes without saying, but it's so cool what you both do!
                $endgroup$
                – Cauder
                2 days ago




                5




                5




                $begingroup$
                Yes, but it's worth clarifying that that statement pertains to the normally distributed population. A sample drawn from that population can be very skewed.
                $endgroup$
                – gung
                2 days ago




                $begingroup$
                Yes, but it's worth clarifying that that statement pertains to the normally distributed population. A sample drawn from that population can be very skewed.
                $endgroup$
                – gung
                2 days ago












                $begingroup$
                When the skew value is small ("small" being decided by the people dealing with the stats in question), you can still treat the population as normal, albeit with minor error as a result.
                $endgroup$
                – Carl Witthoft
                12 hours ago




                $begingroup$
                When the skew value is small ("small" being decided by the people dealing with the stats in question), you can still treat the population as normal, albeit with minor error as a result.
                $endgroup$
                – Carl Witthoft
                12 hours ago











                15












                $begingroup$

                If it has long right tail, then it's right skewed.



                enter image description here



                It can't be a normal distribution since skew !=0, it's perhaps a unimodal skew normal distribution:



                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skew_normal_distribution






                share|cite|improve this answer








                New contributor




                behold is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
                Check out our Code of Conduct.






                $endgroup$

















                  15












                  $begingroup$

                  If it has long right tail, then it's right skewed.



                  enter image description here



                  It can't be a normal distribution since skew !=0, it's perhaps a unimodal skew normal distribution:



                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skew_normal_distribution






                  share|cite|improve this answer








                  New contributor




                  behold is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
                  Check out our Code of Conduct.






                  $endgroup$















                    15












                    15








                    15





                    $begingroup$

                    If it has long right tail, then it's right skewed.



                    enter image description here



                    It can't be a normal distribution since skew !=0, it's perhaps a unimodal skew normal distribution:



                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skew_normal_distribution






                    share|cite|improve this answer








                    New contributor




                    behold is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
                    Check out our Code of Conduct.






                    $endgroup$



                    If it has long right tail, then it's right skewed.



                    enter image description here



                    It can't be a normal distribution since skew !=0, it's perhaps a unimodal skew normal distribution:



                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skew_normal_distribution







                    share|cite|improve this answer








                    New contributor




                    behold is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
                    Check out our Code of Conduct.









                    share|cite|improve this answer



                    share|cite|improve this answer






                    New contributor




                    behold is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
                    Check out our Code of Conduct.









                    answered 2 days ago









                    beholdbehold

                    1757




                    1757




                    New contributor




                    behold is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
                    Check out our Code of Conduct.





                    New contributor





                    behold is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
                    Check out our Code of Conduct.






                    behold is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering.
                    Check out our Code of Conduct.





















                        9












                        $begingroup$

                        It could be a log-normal distribution. As mentioned here:




                        Users' dwell time on online articles (jokes, news etc.) follows a log-normal distribution.




                        The reference given is: Yin, Peifeng; Luo, Ping; Lee, Wang-Chien; Wang, Min (2013). Silence is also evidence: interpreting dwell time for recommendation from psychological perspective. ACM International Conference on KDD.






                        share|cite|improve this answer









                        $endgroup$

















                          9












                          $begingroup$

                          It could be a log-normal distribution. As mentioned here:




                          Users' dwell time on online articles (jokes, news etc.) follows a log-normal distribution.




                          The reference given is: Yin, Peifeng; Luo, Ping; Lee, Wang-Chien; Wang, Min (2013). Silence is also evidence: interpreting dwell time for recommendation from psychological perspective. ACM International Conference on KDD.






                          share|cite|improve this answer









                          $endgroup$















                            9












                            9








                            9





                            $begingroup$

                            It could be a log-normal distribution. As mentioned here:




                            Users' dwell time on online articles (jokes, news etc.) follows a log-normal distribution.




                            The reference given is: Yin, Peifeng; Luo, Ping; Lee, Wang-Chien; Wang, Min (2013). Silence is also evidence: interpreting dwell time for recommendation from psychological perspective. ACM International Conference on KDD.






                            share|cite|improve this answer









                            $endgroup$



                            It could be a log-normal distribution. As mentioned here:




                            Users' dwell time on online articles (jokes, news etc.) follows a log-normal distribution.




                            The reference given is: Yin, Peifeng; Luo, Ping; Lee, Wang-Chien; Wang, Min (2013). Silence is also evidence: interpreting dwell time for recommendation from psychological perspective. ACM International Conference on KDD.







                            share|cite|improve this answer












                            share|cite|improve this answer



                            share|cite|improve this answer










                            answered 2 days ago









                            Count IblisCount Iblis

                            24113




                            24113





















                                5












                                $begingroup$

                                The gamma distribution could be a good candidate to describe this kind of distribution over nonnegative, right-skewed data. See the green line in the image here:
                                https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_distribution






                                share|cite|improve this answer









                                $endgroup$

















                                  5












                                  $begingroup$

                                  The gamma distribution could be a good candidate to describe this kind of distribution over nonnegative, right-skewed data. See the green line in the image here:
                                  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_distribution






                                  share|cite|improve this answer









                                  $endgroup$















                                    5












                                    5








                                    5





                                    $begingroup$

                                    The gamma distribution could be a good candidate to describe this kind of distribution over nonnegative, right-skewed data. See the green line in the image here:
                                    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_distribution






                                    share|cite|improve this answer









                                    $endgroup$



                                    The gamma distribution could be a good candidate to describe this kind of distribution over nonnegative, right-skewed data. See the green line in the image here:
                                    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_distribution







                                    share|cite|improve this answer












                                    share|cite|improve this answer



                                    share|cite|improve this answer










                                    answered 2 days ago









                                    mauricemaurice

                                    18816




                                    18816





















                                        3












                                        $begingroup$

                                        "Normal" and "Gaussian" mean exactly the same thing. As other answers explain, the distribution you're talking about is not normal/Gaussian, because that distribution assigns probabilities to every value on the real line, whereas your distribution only exists between $0$ and $24$.






                                        share|cite|improve this answer









                                        $endgroup$

















                                          3












                                          $begingroup$

                                          "Normal" and "Gaussian" mean exactly the same thing. As other answers explain, the distribution you're talking about is not normal/Gaussian, because that distribution assigns probabilities to every value on the real line, whereas your distribution only exists between $0$ and $24$.






                                          share|cite|improve this answer









                                          $endgroup$















                                            3












                                            3








                                            3





                                            $begingroup$

                                            "Normal" and "Gaussian" mean exactly the same thing. As other answers explain, the distribution you're talking about is not normal/Gaussian, because that distribution assigns probabilities to every value on the real line, whereas your distribution only exists between $0$ and $24$.






                                            share|cite|improve this answer









                                            $endgroup$



                                            "Normal" and "Gaussian" mean exactly the same thing. As other answers explain, the distribution you're talking about is not normal/Gaussian, because that distribution assigns probabilities to every value on the real line, whereas your distribution only exists between $0$ and $24$.







                                            share|cite|improve this answer












                                            share|cite|improve this answer



                                            share|cite|improve this answer










                                            answered 16 hours ago









                                            David RicherbyDavid Richerby

                                            1455




                                            1455





















                                                2












                                                $begingroup$

                                                In the case at hand, since the time spent per day is bound from $0$ to $1$ (if quantified as a fraction of the day), distributions that are unbounded above (e.g. Pareto, skew-normal, Gamma, log-normal) won't work, but Beta would.






                                                share|cite|improve this answer









                                                $endgroup$

















                                                  2












                                                  $begingroup$

                                                  In the case at hand, since the time spent per day is bound from $0$ to $1$ (if quantified as a fraction of the day), distributions that are unbounded above (e.g. Pareto, skew-normal, Gamma, log-normal) won't work, but Beta would.






                                                  share|cite|improve this answer









                                                  $endgroup$















                                                    2












                                                    2








                                                    2





                                                    $begingroup$

                                                    In the case at hand, since the time spent per day is bound from $0$ to $1$ (if quantified as a fraction of the day), distributions that are unbounded above (e.g. Pareto, skew-normal, Gamma, log-normal) won't work, but Beta would.






                                                    share|cite|improve this answer









                                                    $endgroup$



                                                    In the case at hand, since the time spent per day is bound from $0$ to $1$ (if quantified as a fraction of the day), distributions that are unbounded above (e.g. Pareto, skew-normal, Gamma, log-normal) won't work, but Beta would.







                                                    share|cite|improve this answer












                                                    share|cite|improve this answer



                                                    share|cite|improve this answer










                                                    answered 19 hours ago









                                                    J.G.J.G.

                                                    26616




                                                    26616





















                                                        2












                                                        $begingroup$

                                                        How about a hurdle model?



                                                        A hurdle model has two parts. The first is Bernoulli experiment that determines whether you use YouTube at all. If you don't, then your usage time is obviously zero and you're done. If you do, you "pass that hurdle", then the usage time comes from some other strictly positive distribution.



                                                        A closely related concept are zero-inflated models. These are meant to deal with a situation where we observe a bunch of zeros, but can't distinguish between always-zeros and sometimes-zeros. For example, consider the number of cigarettes that a person smokes each day. For non-smokers, that number is always zero, but some smokers may not smoke on a given day (out of cigarettes? on a long flight?). Unlike the hurdle model, the "smoker" distribution here should include zero, but these counts are 'inflated' by the non-smokers' contribution too.






                                                        share|cite|improve this answer









                                                        $endgroup$

















                                                          2












                                                          $begingroup$

                                                          How about a hurdle model?



                                                          A hurdle model has two parts. The first is Bernoulli experiment that determines whether you use YouTube at all. If you don't, then your usage time is obviously zero and you're done. If you do, you "pass that hurdle", then the usage time comes from some other strictly positive distribution.



                                                          A closely related concept are zero-inflated models. These are meant to deal with a situation where we observe a bunch of zeros, but can't distinguish between always-zeros and sometimes-zeros. For example, consider the number of cigarettes that a person smokes each day. For non-smokers, that number is always zero, but some smokers may not smoke on a given day (out of cigarettes? on a long flight?). Unlike the hurdle model, the "smoker" distribution here should include zero, but these counts are 'inflated' by the non-smokers' contribution too.






                                                          share|cite|improve this answer









                                                          $endgroup$















                                                            2












                                                            2








                                                            2





                                                            $begingroup$

                                                            How about a hurdle model?



                                                            A hurdle model has two parts. The first is Bernoulli experiment that determines whether you use YouTube at all. If you don't, then your usage time is obviously zero and you're done. If you do, you "pass that hurdle", then the usage time comes from some other strictly positive distribution.



                                                            A closely related concept are zero-inflated models. These are meant to deal with a situation where we observe a bunch of zeros, but can't distinguish between always-zeros and sometimes-zeros. For example, consider the number of cigarettes that a person smokes each day. For non-smokers, that number is always zero, but some smokers may not smoke on a given day (out of cigarettes? on a long flight?). Unlike the hurdle model, the "smoker" distribution here should include zero, but these counts are 'inflated' by the non-smokers' contribution too.






                                                            share|cite|improve this answer









                                                            $endgroup$



                                                            How about a hurdle model?



                                                            A hurdle model has two parts. The first is Bernoulli experiment that determines whether you use YouTube at all. If you don't, then your usage time is obviously zero and you're done. If you do, you "pass that hurdle", then the usage time comes from some other strictly positive distribution.



                                                            A closely related concept are zero-inflated models. These are meant to deal with a situation where we observe a bunch of zeros, but can't distinguish between always-zeros and sometimes-zeros. For example, consider the number of cigarettes that a person smokes each day. For non-smokers, that number is always zero, but some smokers may not smoke on a given day (out of cigarettes? on a long flight?). Unlike the hurdle model, the "smoker" distribution here should include zero, but these counts are 'inflated' by the non-smokers' contribution too.







                                                            share|cite|improve this answer












                                                            share|cite|improve this answer



                                                            share|cite|improve this answer










                                                            answered 16 hours ago









                                                            Matt KrauseMatt Krause

                                                            15k24380




                                                            15k24380





















                                                                1












                                                                $begingroup$

                                                                "Is there a better word for that distribution?"



                                                                There's a worthwhile distinction here between using words to describe the properties of the distribution, versus trying to find a "name" for the distribution so that you can identify it as (approximately) an instance of a particular standard distribution: one for which a formula or statistical tables might exist for its distribution function, and for which you could estimate its parameters. In this latter case, you are likely using the named distribution, e.g. "normal/Gaussian" (the two terms are generally synonymous), as a model that captures some of the key features of your data, rather than claiming the population your data is drawn from exactly follows that theoretical distribution. To slightly misquote George Box, all models are "wrong", but some are useful. If you are thinking about the modelling approach, it is worth considering what features you want to incorporate and how complicated or parsimonious you want your model to be.



                                                                Being positively skewed is an example of describing a property that the distribution has, but doesn't come close to specifying which off-the-shelf distribution is "the" appropriate model. It does rule out some candidates, for example the Gaussian (i.e. normal) distribution has zero skew so will not be appropriate to model your data if the skew is an important feature. There may be other properties of the data that are important to you too, e.g. that it's unimodal (has just one peak) or that it is bounded between 0 and 24 hours (or between 0 and 1, if you are writing it as a fraction of the day), or that there is a probability mass concentrated at zero (since there are people who do not watch youtube at all on a given day). You may also be interested in other properties like the kurtosis. And it is worth bearing in mind that even if your distribution had a "hump" or "bell-curve" shape and had zero or near-zero skew, it doesn't automatically follow that the normal distribution is "correct" for it! On the other hand, even if the population your data is drawn from actually did follow a particular distribution precisely, due to sampling error your dataset may not quite resemble it. Small data sets are likely to be "noisy", and it may be unclear whether certain features you can see, e.g. additional small humps or asymmetric tails, are properties of the underlying population the data was drawn from (and perhaps therefore ought to be incorporated in your model) or whether they are just artefacts from your particular sample (and for modelling purposes should be ignored). If you have a small data set and the skew is close to zero, then it is even plausible the underlying distribution is actually symmetric. The larger your data set and the larger the skewness, the less plausible this becomes — but while you could perform a significance test to see how convincing is the evidence your data provides for skewness in the population it was drawn from, this may be missing the point as to whether a normal (or other zero skew) distribution is appropriate as a model ...



                                                                Which properties of the data really matter for the purposes you are intending to model it? Note that if the skew is reasonably small and you do not care very much about it, even if the underlying population is genuinely skewed, then you might still find the normal distribution a useful model to approximate this true distribution of watching times. But you should check that this doesn't end up making silly predictions. Because a normal distribution has no highest or lowest possible value, then although extremely high or low values become increasingly unlikely, you will always find that your model predicts there is some probability of watching for a negative number of hours per day, or more than 24 hours. This gets more problematic for you if the predicted probability of such impossible events becomes high. If the skewness is so noteworthy you want to capture it as part of your model, then the skew normal distribution may be more appropriate. If you want to capture both skewness and kurtosis, then consider the skewed t. If you want to incorporate the physically possible upper and lower bounds, then consider using the truncated versions of these distributions. Many other probability distributions exist that can be skewed and unimodal (for appropriate parameter choices) such as the F or gamma distributions, and again you can truncate these so they do not predict impossibly high watching times. A beta distribution may be a good choice if you are modelling the fraction of the day spent watching, as this is always bounded between 0 and 1 without further truncation being necessary. If you want to incorporate the concentration of probability at exactly zero due to non-watchers, then consider building in a hurdle model.



                                                                But at the point you are trying to throw in every feature you can identify from your data, and build an ever more sophisticated model, perhaps you should ask yourself why you are doing this? Would there be an advantage to a simpler model, for example it being easier to work with mathematically or having fewer parameters to estimate? If you are concerned that such simplification will leave you unable to capture all of the properties of interest to you, it may well be that no "off-the-shelf" distribution does quite what you want. However, we are not restricted to working with named distributions whose mathematical properties have been elucidated previously. Instead, consider using your data to construct an empirical distribution function. This will capture all the behaviour that was present in your data, but you can no longer give it a name like "normal" or "gamma", nor can you apply mathematical properties that pertain only to a particular distribution. For instance, the "95% of the data lies within 1.96 standard deviations of the mean" rule is for normally distributed data and may not apply to your distribution; though note that some rules apply to all distributions, e.g. Chebyshev's inequality guarantees that at least 75% of your data must lie within two standard deviations of the mean, regardless of the skew. Unfortunately the empirical distribution will also inherit all of the properties of your data set that arose just by sampling error, not just those possessed by the underlying population, so you may find a histogram of your empirical distribution has some humps and dips that the population itself does not — if you want to improve matters, you can try taking a larger sample. You may want to investigate smoothed empirical distribution functions.



                                                                In summary: although the normal distribution has zero skew, the fact your data are skewed doesn't rule out the normal distribution as a useful model, though it does suggest some other distribution may be more appropriate. You should also consider other properties of the data when choosing your model, besides the skew, and consider too the purposes you are going to use the model for. It's safe to say that your true population of watching times does not exactly follow some famous, named distribution, but this does not necessarily mean that such a distribution is doomed to be useless as a model. However, for some purposes you may prefer to just use the empirical distribution itself, rather than to fit a standard distribution to it.






                                                                share|cite|improve this answer











                                                                $endgroup$

















                                                                  1












                                                                  $begingroup$

                                                                  "Is there a better word for that distribution?"



                                                                  There's a worthwhile distinction here between using words to describe the properties of the distribution, versus trying to find a "name" for the distribution so that you can identify it as (approximately) an instance of a particular standard distribution: one for which a formula or statistical tables might exist for its distribution function, and for which you could estimate its parameters. In this latter case, you are likely using the named distribution, e.g. "normal/Gaussian" (the two terms are generally synonymous), as a model that captures some of the key features of your data, rather than claiming the population your data is drawn from exactly follows that theoretical distribution. To slightly misquote George Box, all models are "wrong", but some are useful. If you are thinking about the modelling approach, it is worth considering what features you want to incorporate and how complicated or parsimonious you want your model to be.



                                                                  Being positively skewed is an example of describing a property that the distribution has, but doesn't come close to specifying which off-the-shelf distribution is "the" appropriate model. It does rule out some candidates, for example the Gaussian (i.e. normal) distribution has zero skew so will not be appropriate to model your data if the skew is an important feature. There may be other properties of the data that are important to you too, e.g. that it's unimodal (has just one peak) or that it is bounded between 0 and 24 hours (or between 0 and 1, if you are writing it as a fraction of the day), or that there is a probability mass concentrated at zero (since there are people who do not watch youtube at all on a given day). You may also be interested in other properties like the kurtosis. And it is worth bearing in mind that even if your distribution had a "hump" or "bell-curve" shape and had zero or near-zero skew, it doesn't automatically follow that the normal distribution is "correct" for it! On the other hand, even if the population your data is drawn from actually did follow a particular distribution precisely, due to sampling error your dataset may not quite resemble it. Small data sets are likely to be "noisy", and it may be unclear whether certain features you can see, e.g. additional small humps or asymmetric tails, are properties of the underlying population the data was drawn from (and perhaps therefore ought to be incorporated in your model) or whether they are just artefacts from your particular sample (and for modelling purposes should be ignored). If you have a small data set and the skew is close to zero, then it is even plausible the underlying distribution is actually symmetric. The larger your data set and the larger the skewness, the less plausible this becomes — but while you could perform a significance test to see how convincing is the evidence your data provides for skewness in the population it was drawn from, this may be missing the point as to whether a normal (or other zero skew) distribution is appropriate as a model ...



                                                                  Which properties of the data really matter for the purposes you are intending to model it? Note that if the skew is reasonably small and you do not care very much about it, even if the underlying population is genuinely skewed, then you might still find the normal distribution a useful model to approximate this true distribution of watching times. But you should check that this doesn't end up making silly predictions. Because a normal distribution has no highest or lowest possible value, then although extremely high or low values become increasingly unlikely, you will always find that your model predicts there is some probability of watching for a negative number of hours per day, or more than 24 hours. This gets more problematic for you if the predicted probability of such impossible events becomes high. If the skewness is so noteworthy you want to capture it as part of your model, then the skew normal distribution may be more appropriate. If you want to capture both skewness and kurtosis, then consider the skewed t. If you want to incorporate the physically possible upper and lower bounds, then consider using the truncated versions of these distributions. Many other probability distributions exist that can be skewed and unimodal (for appropriate parameter choices) such as the F or gamma distributions, and again you can truncate these so they do not predict impossibly high watching times. A beta distribution may be a good choice if you are modelling the fraction of the day spent watching, as this is always bounded between 0 and 1 without further truncation being necessary. If you want to incorporate the concentration of probability at exactly zero due to non-watchers, then consider building in a hurdle model.



                                                                  But at the point you are trying to throw in every feature you can identify from your data, and build an ever more sophisticated model, perhaps you should ask yourself why you are doing this? Would there be an advantage to a simpler model, for example it being easier to work with mathematically or having fewer parameters to estimate? If you are concerned that such simplification will leave you unable to capture all of the properties of interest to you, it may well be that no "off-the-shelf" distribution does quite what you want. However, we are not restricted to working with named distributions whose mathematical properties have been elucidated previously. Instead, consider using your data to construct an empirical distribution function. This will capture all the behaviour that was present in your data, but you can no longer give it a name like "normal" or "gamma", nor can you apply mathematical properties that pertain only to a particular distribution. For instance, the "95% of the data lies within 1.96 standard deviations of the mean" rule is for normally distributed data and may not apply to your distribution; though note that some rules apply to all distributions, e.g. Chebyshev's inequality guarantees that at least 75% of your data must lie within two standard deviations of the mean, regardless of the skew. Unfortunately the empirical distribution will also inherit all of the properties of your data set that arose just by sampling error, not just those possessed by the underlying population, so you may find a histogram of your empirical distribution has some humps and dips that the population itself does not — if you want to improve matters, you can try taking a larger sample. You may want to investigate smoothed empirical distribution functions.



                                                                  In summary: although the normal distribution has zero skew, the fact your data are skewed doesn't rule out the normal distribution as a useful model, though it does suggest some other distribution may be more appropriate. You should also consider other properties of the data when choosing your model, besides the skew, and consider too the purposes you are going to use the model for. It's safe to say that your true population of watching times does not exactly follow some famous, named distribution, but this does not necessarily mean that such a distribution is doomed to be useless as a model. However, for some purposes you may prefer to just use the empirical distribution itself, rather than to fit a standard distribution to it.






                                                                  share|cite|improve this answer











                                                                  $endgroup$















                                                                    1












                                                                    1








                                                                    1





                                                                    $begingroup$

                                                                    "Is there a better word for that distribution?"



                                                                    There's a worthwhile distinction here between using words to describe the properties of the distribution, versus trying to find a "name" for the distribution so that you can identify it as (approximately) an instance of a particular standard distribution: one for which a formula or statistical tables might exist for its distribution function, and for which you could estimate its parameters. In this latter case, you are likely using the named distribution, e.g. "normal/Gaussian" (the two terms are generally synonymous), as a model that captures some of the key features of your data, rather than claiming the population your data is drawn from exactly follows that theoretical distribution. To slightly misquote George Box, all models are "wrong", but some are useful. If you are thinking about the modelling approach, it is worth considering what features you want to incorporate and how complicated or parsimonious you want your model to be.



                                                                    Being positively skewed is an example of describing a property that the distribution has, but doesn't come close to specifying which off-the-shelf distribution is "the" appropriate model. It does rule out some candidates, for example the Gaussian (i.e. normal) distribution has zero skew so will not be appropriate to model your data if the skew is an important feature. There may be other properties of the data that are important to you too, e.g. that it's unimodal (has just one peak) or that it is bounded between 0 and 24 hours (or between 0 and 1, if you are writing it as a fraction of the day), or that there is a probability mass concentrated at zero (since there are people who do not watch youtube at all on a given day). You may also be interested in other properties like the kurtosis. And it is worth bearing in mind that even if your distribution had a "hump" or "bell-curve" shape and had zero or near-zero skew, it doesn't automatically follow that the normal distribution is "correct" for it! On the other hand, even if the population your data is drawn from actually did follow a particular distribution precisely, due to sampling error your dataset may not quite resemble it. Small data sets are likely to be "noisy", and it may be unclear whether certain features you can see, e.g. additional small humps or asymmetric tails, are properties of the underlying population the data was drawn from (and perhaps therefore ought to be incorporated in your model) or whether they are just artefacts from your particular sample (and for modelling purposes should be ignored). If you have a small data set and the skew is close to zero, then it is even plausible the underlying distribution is actually symmetric. The larger your data set and the larger the skewness, the less plausible this becomes — but while you could perform a significance test to see how convincing is the evidence your data provides for skewness in the population it was drawn from, this may be missing the point as to whether a normal (or other zero skew) distribution is appropriate as a model ...



                                                                    Which properties of the data really matter for the purposes you are intending to model it? Note that if the skew is reasonably small and you do not care very much about it, even if the underlying population is genuinely skewed, then you might still find the normal distribution a useful model to approximate this true distribution of watching times. But you should check that this doesn't end up making silly predictions. Because a normal distribution has no highest or lowest possible value, then although extremely high or low values become increasingly unlikely, you will always find that your model predicts there is some probability of watching for a negative number of hours per day, or more than 24 hours. This gets more problematic for you if the predicted probability of such impossible events becomes high. If the skewness is so noteworthy you want to capture it as part of your model, then the skew normal distribution may be more appropriate. If you want to capture both skewness and kurtosis, then consider the skewed t. If you want to incorporate the physically possible upper and lower bounds, then consider using the truncated versions of these distributions. Many other probability distributions exist that can be skewed and unimodal (for appropriate parameter choices) such as the F or gamma distributions, and again you can truncate these so they do not predict impossibly high watching times. A beta distribution may be a good choice if you are modelling the fraction of the day spent watching, as this is always bounded between 0 and 1 without further truncation being necessary. If you want to incorporate the concentration of probability at exactly zero due to non-watchers, then consider building in a hurdle model.



                                                                    But at the point you are trying to throw in every feature you can identify from your data, and build an ever more sophisticated model, perhaps you should ask yourself why you are doing this? Would there be an advantage to a simpler model, for example it being easier to work with mathematically or having fewer parameters to estimate? If you are concerned that such simplification will leave you unable to capture all of the properties of interest to you, it may well be that no "off-the-shelf" distribution does quite what you want. However, we are not restricted to working with named distributions whose mathematical properties have been elucidated previously. Instead, consider using your data to construct an empirical distribution function. This will capture all the behaviour that was present in your data, but you can no longer give it a name like "normal" or "gamma", nor can you apply mathematical properties that pertain only to a particular distribution. For instance, the "95% of the data lies within 1.96 standard deviations of the mean" rule is for normally distributed data and may not apply to your distribution; though note that some rules apply to all distributions, e.g. Chebyshev's inequality guarantees that at least 75% of your data must lie within two standard deviations of the mean, regardless of the skew. Unfortunately the empirical distribution will also inherit all of the properties of your data set that arose just by sampling error, not just those possessed by the underlying population, so you may find a histogram of your empirical distribution has some humps and dips that the population itself does not — if you want to improve matters, you can try taking a larger sample. You may want to investigate smoothed empirical distribution functions.



                                                                    In summary: although the normal distribution has zero skew, the fact your data are skewed doesn't rule out the normal distribution as a useful model, though it does suggest some other distribution may be more appropriate. You should also consider other properties of the data when choosing your model, besides the skew, and consider too the purposes you are going to use the model for. It's safe to say that your true population of watching times does not exactly follow some famous, named distribution, but this does not necessarily mean that such a distribution is doomed to be useless as a model. However, for some purposes you may prefer to just use the empirical distribution itself, rather than to fit a standard distribution to it.






                                                                    share|cite|improve this answer











                                                                    $endgroup$



                                                                    "Is there a better word for that distribution?"



                                                                    There's a worthwhile distinction here between using words to describe the properties of the distribution, versus trying to find a "name" for the distribution so that you can identify it as (approximately) an instance of a particular standard distribution: one for which a formula or statistical tables might exist for its distribution function, and for which you could estimate its parameters. In this latter case, you are likely using the named distribution, e.g. "normal/Gaussian" (the two terms are generally synonymous), as a model that captures some of the key features of your data, rather than claiming the population your data is drawn from exactly follows that theoretical distribution. To slightly misquote George Box, all models are "wrong", but some are useful. If you are thinking about the modelling approach, it is worth considering what features you want to incorporate and how complicated or parsimonious you want your model to be.



                                                                    Being positively skewed is an example of describing a property that the distribution has, but doesn't come close to specifying which off-the-shelf distribution is "the" appropriate model. It does rule out some candidates, for example the Gaussian (i.e. normal) distribution has zero skew so will not be appropriate to model your data if the skew is an important feature. There may be other properties of the data that are important to you too, e.g. that it's unimodal (has just one peak) or that it is bounded between 0 and 24 hours (or between 0 and 1, if you are writing it as a fraction of the day), or that there is a probability mass concentrated at zero (since there are people who do not watch youtube at all on a given day). You may also be interested in other properties like the kurtosis. And it is worth bearing in mind that even if your distribution had a "hump" or "bell-curve" shape and had zero or near-zero skew, it doesn't automatically follow that the normal distribution is "correct" for it! On the other hand, even if the population your data is drawn from actually did follow a particular distribution precisely, due to sampling error your dataset may not quite resemble it. Small data sets are likely to be "noisy", and it may be unclear whether certain features you can see, e.g. additional small humps or asymmetric tails, are properties of the underlying population the data was drawn from (and perhaps therefore ought to be incorporated in your model) or whether they are just artefacts from your particular sample (and for modelling purposes should be ignored). If you have a small data set and the skew is close to zero, then it is even plausible the underlying distribution is actually symmetric. The larger your data set and the larger the skewness, the less plausible this becomes — but while you could perform a significance test to see how convincing is the evidence your data provides for skewness in the population it was drawn from, this may be missing the point as to whether a normal (or other zero skew) distribution is appropriate as a model ...



                                                                    Which properties of the data really matter for the purposes you are intending to model it? Note that if the skew is reasonably small and you do not care very much about it, even if the underlying population is genuinely skewed, then you might still find the normal distribution a useful model to approximate this true distribution of watching times. But you should check that this doesn't end up making silly predictions. Because a normal distribution has no highest or lowest possible value, then although extremely high or low values become increasingly unlikely, you will always find that your model predicts there is some probability of watching for a negative number of hours per day, or more than 24 hours. This gets more problematic for you if the predicted probability of such impossible events becomes high. If the skewness is so noteworthy you want to capture it as part of your model, then the skew normal distribution may be more appropriate. If you want to capture both skewness and kurtosis, then consider the skewed t. If you want to incorporate the physically possible upper and lower bounds, then consider using the truncated versions of these distributions. Many other probability distributions exist that can be skewed and unimodal (for appropriate parameter choices) such as the F or gamma distributions, and again you can truncate these so they do not predict impossibly high watching times. A beta distribution may be a good choice if you are modelling the fraction of the day spent watching, as this is always bounded between 0 and 1 without further truncation being necessary. If you want to incorporate the concentration of probability at exactly zero due to non-watchers, then consider building in a hurdle model.



                                                                    But at the point you are trying to throw in every feature you can identify from your data, and build an ever more sophisticated model, perhaps you should ask yourself why you are doing this? Would there be an advantage to a simpler model, for example it being easier to work with mathematically or having fewer parameters to estimate? If you are concerned that such simplification will leave you unable to capture all of the properties of interest to you, it may well be that no "off-the-shelf" distribution does quite what you want. However, we are not restricted to working with named distributions whose mathematical properties have been elucidated previously. Instead, consider using your data to construct an empirical distribution function. This will capture all the behaviour that was present in your data, but you can no longer give it a name like "normal" or "gamma", nor can you apply mathematical properties that pertain only to a particular distribution. For instance, the "95% of the data lies within 1.96 standard deviations of the mean" rule is for normally distributed data and may not apply to your distribution; though note that some rules apply to all distributions, e.g. Chebyshev's inequality guarantees that at least 75% of your data must lie within two standard deviations of the mean, regardless of the skew. Unfortunately the empirical distribution will also inherit all of the properties of your data set that arose just by sampling error, not just those possessed by the underlying population, so you may find a histogram of your empirical distribution has some humps and dips that the population itself does not — if you want to improve matters, you can try taking a larger sample. You may want to investigate smoothed empirical distribution functions.



                                                                    In summary: although the normal distribution has zero skew, the fact your data are skewed doesn't rule out the normal distribution as a useful model, though it does suggest some other distribution may be more appropriate. You should also consider other properties of the data when choosing your model, besides the skew, and consider too the purposes you are going to use the model for. It's safe to say that your true population of watching times does not exactly follow some famous, named distribution, but this does not necessarily mean that such a distribution is doomed to be useless as a model. However, for some purposes you may prefer to just use the empirical distribution itself, rather than to fit a standard distribution to it.







                                                                    share|cite|improve this answer














                                                                    share|cite|improve this answer



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