Are you sure you're taking the fear out?!?!

My homework assignment for this week is to write a 500 word report on what is skewed and kurtosis distribution, and explain the positive, normal, and negative skewness. Once I was over the total bullshizz of these words skewness and kurtosis (say WTF?!) I headed to the library to get the recommended text: Taking the Fear out of Data Analysis. Great title. I was confident that this is what was going to happen. Until I got to the section on skewness and kurtosis that begins like this:

...one can get a reasonable idea of skewness and kurtosis by looking at a histogram or frequency polygon and by examining the relative magnitudes of the mean and median...

Erm, pardon? Say again? Seriously, how is that taking the fear out of anything? That is essentially taking the fear and multiplying it by a gazillion trillion billion and talking utter nonsense in words that mean nothing to people who know nothing about this RUBBISH!!! 

In my opinion a more reasonable explanation would be along these lines:

• Skewness is when something is a bit squint
• Kurtosis sounds awfully close to halitosis and one should never neglect ones oral hygiene
• Positive is when one is happy jolly la-la-effin-la-ing over when one understands something
• Normal is not a word that should be bandied around. Who or what is normal? This question requires whole PHD studies and not 500 word reports
• Negative is how I feel about all this maths stuff... 

 I do have one question though that I really need explaining. What does all this have to do with analysing and managing risk? Why do I need a PHD in Maths to be able to say if something has a high risk event? Refer to previous points: totally baffling bullshizz.