welcome to a lesson on the shape of a distribution of a variable the distribution of a variable shows all possible values the variable can take on and the frequency that each of the possible values occurs the distribution can be shown as a list table or graph here we see several distributions shown as bar graphs in statistics when studying distributions we have to look at the following characteristics shape outliers center spread these are sometimes referred to as the socks of the distribution common distributions due to their shape are bell shaped or normal symmetric right skewed left skewed unimodal and bimodal however there are many other types of distributions let's take a look at some of the more basic distributions based upon their shape a symmetric distribution is a distribution shape in which the left and right sides of the distribution are roughly mirror images of one another you can think of a distribution where a vertical line could cut the graph in half a bell-shaped or normal distribution as pictured here as well as the uniform distribution are both symmetric distributions because the left and right sides of the distributions are mirror images of one another a skewed distribution is a distribution shape in which the data is asymmetrical and tends to cluster towards one side while having a longer tail on the other side a distribution is left skewed or negatively skewed if the tail this side here is to the left and the data clusters toward the right a distribution is right skewed or positively skewed if the tail is to the right and the data clusters toward the left notice how the direction of the tail indicates whether the distribution is left skewed or right skewed if the tail is to the left the distribution is left skewed or negatively skewed if the tail is to the right the distribution is right skewed or positively skewed a unimodal distribution is a distribution shape with one clear peak or most frequent value the values increase at first rise to a single peak or they then decrease the graph has one maximum and here we see examples of unimodal distributions which on the left we should recognize as a normal distribution and here we see a bar graph with one clear peak and notice how it also has a tail to the right and therefore this is also right skewed and a bimodal distribution is a distribution shape with two clear peaks or most frequent values the graph has two local maximums and here we have two examples of bimodal distributions that have two clear peaks i hope you found this helpful