Is a distribution left or right skewed?

Quck analysis: If a data distribution is skewed the data is not distributed symetricaly.

An example that is often used to show left skewnes is the salary distribution in most capitalist countries. There are some high earners which account for a higher mean then median

Eg lets asume in a country there are 5 people which have the following incomes

3, 5, 5, 5, 20

The median (the middle number of ascending data points) is 5

The mean (average) datavalue is (3+5+5+5+20)/5 = 38/5 = 7,6

The modus (most poular number) is also 5. Thats because we have only very few sample values.

So the mean is left of the median -> we can conclude data distribution is left skewed.