To illustrate this relationship, let's consider the following categories of distribution shapes.

The graph is symmetric.
Symmetric
The graph is skewed to the right.
Skewed Right
The graph is skewed to the left.
Skewed Left
The graph has two peaks.
Bimodal
  1. A symmetric bell-shaped distribution has one mound, and the left side of the distribution roughly mirrors the right side.
  2. A right-skewed distribution has a “tail” to the right hand side of the distribution. In other words, most values are relatively small, but a few values are very large.
  3. Conversely, a left-skewed distribution mostly contains relatively large values, but also a few very small values.
  4. A bimodal distribution contains two peaks, or modes. A bimodal distribution can be symmetric or asymmetric.

Note that there are more than these four types of distributions, which can be explored in the interactive portion of this activity.