New, functional, concepts of skewness and kurtosis are introduced for large classes of continuous univariate distributions. They are the first skewness and kurtosis measures to be defined directly in terms of the probability density function and its derivative, and are directly interpretable in terms of them. Unimodality of the density is a basic prerequisite. The mode defines the centre of suc...

The tropical Indian Ocean has experienced a faster warming rate in the west than in the east over the twentieth century. The warming pattern resembles a positive IndianOcean dipole (IOD) that is well captured by climate models from phase 5 of the CoupledModel Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), forced with the two main anthropogenic forcings, long-lived greenhouse gases (GHGs), and aerosols. Howev...

22 Rewards in the natural environment are rarely predicted with complete certainty. Uncertainty 23 relating to future rewards has typically been defined as the variance of the potential 24 outcomes. However, the asymmetry of predicted reward distributions, known as skewness, 25 constitutes a distinct but neuroscientifically underexplored risk term that may also have an 26 impact on preference. ...

It is currently debated whether the perception of gloss is linked to the statistical parameters of the retinal image. In particular, it has been suggested that gloss is highly correlated with the skewness of the luminance histogram. However, other psychophysical work with artificial stimuli has shown that skewness alone is not enough to induce the perception of gloss. Here, we analyzed many ima...

Do Wages Really Compensate for Risk Aversion and Skewness Affection? Utility theory suggests that foreseeable risk should increase the compensation for work. This paper expands on this notion: on basis of utility theory, people should care not only about risk but also about the skewness in the distribution of the compensation paid. In particular, because the degree of risk aversion ought to dec...

Utility is the fundamental variable thought to underlie economic choices. In particular, utility functions are believed to reflect preferences toward risk, a key decision variable in many real-life situations. To assess the validity of utility representations, it is therefore important to examine risk preferences. In turn, this approach requires formal definitions of risk. A standard approach i...

The characteristics of the distribution of security returns, such as skewness, play a significant role in financial theory and practice. This paper examines whether conditional skewness of daily aggregate market returns is predictable and investigates the economic mechanisms underlying this predictability. In both developed and emerging markets, there is strong evidence that lagged returns pred...

Spatial properties of noise statistics near unheated, laboratory-scale supersonic jets yield insights into source characteristics and near-field shock formation. Primary findings are (1) waveforms with positive pressure skewness radiate from the source with a directivity upstream of maximum overall level and (2) skewness of the time derivative of the pressure waveforms increases significantly w...

In parametric stochastic frontier models, the composed error is specified as the sum of a two-sided noise component and a one-sided inefficiency component, which is usually assumed to be half-normal, implying that the error distribution is skewed in one direction. In practice, however, estimation residuals may display skewness in the wrong direction. Model respecification or pulling a new sampl...