
Analyzing Software Measurement Data ◾ 235
You can see in Figure 6.4 that the data are evenly distributed about the
mean, which is a signicant characteristic of the normal distribution. But
there are other distributions where the data are skewed, so that there are
more data points on one side of the mean than another. For example, as
you can see in Figure 6.5, most of the data are on the le-hand side, and
we say that the distribution is skewed to the le.
ere are also distributions that vary radically from the bell-shaped
curve, such as the one shown in Figure 6.6. As we shall see, the type of
distribution determines the type of analysis ...