Kurtic

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Describing a distribution or curve characterized by sharp peaks and heavy tails; relating to statistical measures that indicate the degree of peakedness or flatness compared to a normal distribution; indicating extreme deviation in data distribution shape
2. Pertaining to statistical properties of datasets where the frequency distribution exhibits pronounced central concentration and tail extremities; referring to the measure used to assess the peakedness relative to a normal curve; indicating heightened or diminished tail weight in probability distributions
3. Concerning the shape characteristic of data distributions that are more pointed or flattened than the normal curve; associated with the statistical quantifier for the degree of peakedness and tail thickness; used to describe distributions with unusual sharpness or flatness in their form

Etymology: "Kurtic" is formed from "kurtosis" plus the adjectival suffix "-ic". "Kurtosis" was coined by the English statistician Karl Pearson in 1905, in a paper on the shape of frequency curves. He built it from the Greek "kurtos", meaning "curved" or "bulging", the same root that gives the word "kyphosis" for an abnormal forward curvature of the spine. Pearson needed a term for how sharply a distribution peaks and how heavy its tails are, and he reached for a classical root rather than an existing English word. The word "kurtic" follows the regular pattern of English adjectives such as "statistic" from "statistics" or "cosmic" from "cosmos", so it simply describes things related to kurtosis. A dataset or distribution is called kurtic when its measured kurtosis is notable, whether unusually peaked with heavy tails (leptokurtic) or flatter with light tails (platykurtic), relative to a normal curve.

Synonyms: peaked, leptokurtic

Antonyms: flat, platykurtic