Kurtosis measures the heaviness of tails; no kurtosis corresponds to a value of 3; to make it intuitive, subtract 3 so no kurtosis yields 0.

• A. Kurtosis
• B. Skewness
• C. Variance
• D. Standard deviation

Answer: (A)

Kurtosis is the right concept because it specifically describes how heavy or light the tails of a distribution are and how sharp the peak is, relative to a normal shape. The normal distribution has a kurtosis value of 3. For intuition, statisticians often use excess kurtosis, which is kurtosis minus 3, so a normal distribution yields 0. Values above 0 indicate heavier tails and a more pronounced peak (leptokurtic), while values below 0 indicate lighter tails and a flatter peak (platykurtic). Skewness would tell you about asymmetry, not tail heaviness, and variance or standard deviation measure spread around the mean, not the tail behavior.