What is the use of moments in statistics?

Question

Can anyone give me a simple explanation (i.e. without too many equations) of what is the use of moments in statistics? Why do we need moments? What can we learn from them?

Answer 1

Hi! Excellent question!

Moments are are very useful in statistics because they tell you much about your data. There are four commonly used moments in statistics: the mean, variance, skewness, and kurtosis. The mean gives you a measure of center of the data. The square root of the variance is standard deviation, and this tells you the spread of your data about the mean. Skewness describes the shape of the distribution, and kurtosis measures the peakedness or flatness of the distribution.