Education and debate

Statistics Notes: Detecting skewness from summary information

BMJ 1996; 313 doi: 10.1136/bmj.313.7066.1200 (Published 9 November 1996)
Cite this as: BMJ 1996;313:1200.1

This article has a correction

Please see: Correction

Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment. Please log in or subscribe below.

  1. Douglas G Altman, heada,
  2. J Martin Bland, professor of medical statisticsb
  1. a ICRF Medical Statistics Group, Centre for Statistics in Medicine, Institute of Health Sciences, PO Box 777, Oxford OX3 7LF
  2. b Department of Public Health Sciences, St George's Hospital Medical School, London SW17 0RE
  1. Correspondence to: Mr Altman.

    As we have noted before, many statistical methods of analysis assume that the data have a normal distribution.1 When the data do not they can often be transformed to make them more normal.2 Readers of published papers may wish to be reassured that the authors have carried out an appropriate analysis. When authors present data in the form of a histogram or scatter diagram then readers can see at a glance whether the distributional assumption is met. If, however, only summary statistics are presented—as is often the case—this is much more difficult. If the summary statistics …

    Access to the full text of this article requires a subscription or payment

    Subscribe

    Article access

    Article access for 1 day

    Purchase this article for £20 $30 €32*

    The PDF version can be downloaded as your personal record

    * Prices do not include VAT

    Rapid responses

    THIS WEEK'S POLL

    Read related article

    See previous polls

    BMJ most popular