kurtosis

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kurtosis

/kəˈtəʊ.sɪs/ UK
/ˌkɜːˈtəʊ.sɪs/ UK
/kɚˈtoʊ.sɪs/ Canada, US
/ˌkɝˈtoʊ.sɪs/ Canada, US
/kəˈtəʉ.sɪs/ Australia
/kəˈtɐʉ.sɪs/ Australia
/ˌkɜːˈtəʉ.sɪs/ Australia
/ˌkɜːˈtɐʉ.sɪs/ Australia

Where it comes from

Coined by English mathematician, biometrician, and eugenicist Karl Pearson c. 1895 (published 1899 in "On certain Properties of the Hypergeometrical Series, and so on the fitting of such series to Observation Polygons in the Theory of Chance", Phil. Mag.).

From Ancient Greek κύρτωσις (kúrtōsis, “a bulging, convexity”), from κυρτός (kurtós, “bulging, convex”).

noun kurtoses · kurtosises

countable, uncountable A measure of "heaviness of the tails" of a probability distribution, defined as the fourth cumulant divided by the square of the variance of the probability distribution.
countable, uncountable Excess kurtosis: the difference between a given distribution's kurtosis and the kurtosis of a normal distribution.

Translations

Every language

noun measure of "tail heaviness"

Español	curtosis
中文	峰度 fēngdù
Português	curtose
Français	kurtosis, coefficient d'aplatissement
Deutsch	Kurtosis, Wölbung
Русский	эксце́сс ekscéss, коэффицие́нт эксце́сса koefficijént ekscéssa
العربية	تَفَرْطُح tafarṭuḥ

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MLA

"kurtosis." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/kurtosis. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

kurtosis. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/kurtosis

Chicago

"kurtosis." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/kurtosis.

BibTeX

@misc{kurtosis_2026,
  title = {kurtosis},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/kurtosis},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}