Why is it helpful to know the type of distribution?

Frequently Asked Questions Python FAQ
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Question

In the context of this exercise, why is it helpful to know the type of distribution?

Answer

Knowing the type of distribution helps us to generally understand the data better.

Any peaks in a distribution tell us where the data is concentrated. Depending on the skew, most of the data will be concentrated on one side, and it will describe how much data is deviated from a normal distribution.

The type of distribution can also describe the potential position of the mean and median. When the graph is skew-left, the median is typically greater than the mean. When the graph is skew-right, the median is typically less than the mean.

A skewed distribution can also tell us not to depend on the mean so much, as its position is not very reliable.

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This is a massive waste of time. Not only are the answers too specific, i.e. it don’t work with a capital letter at the start but also the amount of time spent learning incredibly basic statistics in a course that says statistics is a prerequisite is laughable! Its almost like you benefit from us learning more slowly because you operate on a subscription model! Stop wasting our time with time consuming trivia and teach us Python!

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+1. Also we’ve already covered this in the Matplotlib and Seaborn modules.

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I disagree with the complainers, this section is rightly titled “Learn Stats with NumPy” and that’s exactly what it is doing. Good to have all this stats revision.