Solved – Unbiased estimators of skewness and kurtosis

kurtosisskewnessunbiased-estimator

The skewness and kurtosis are defined as:
$$\zeta_3 = \frac{E[(X-\mu)^3]}{E[(X-\mu)^2]^{3/2}} = \frac{\mu_3}{\sigma^3}$$
$$\zeta_4 = \frac{E[(X-\mu)^4]}{E[(X-\mu)^2]^2} = \frac{\mu_4}{\sigma^4}$$

The following formulae are used to calculate sample skewness and kurtosis:
$$z_3 = \frac{\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n} [(x_i-\bar x)^3]}{(\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n}[(x_i-\bar x)^2])^{3/2}}$$
$$z_4 = \frac{\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n} [(x_i-\bar x)^4]}{(\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^{n}[(x_i-\bar x)^2])^2}$$

My question is: are these estimators unbiased? I don't know whether I should use unbiased standard deviation or the biased one in the denominator.

In general, if we have a function $f$ whose variables are unbiased estimators, then can we say $f$ is an unbiased estimator as well?

Best Answer

See pp. 8-9 of http://modelingwithdata.org/pdfs/moments.pdf . Also look at http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/v19n2/doane.pdf for some useful perspectives to get your thinking in the right frame of mind.

Note that what you are probably calling the unbiased standard deviation is a biased estimator of standard deviation Why is sample standard deviation a biased estimator of $\sigma$? , although before taking the square root it is an unbiased estimator of variance.

A nonlinear function of an unbiased estimator is not necessarily going to be unbiased ("almost surely" won't be). The direction of the bias can be determined by Jensen's Inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jensen%27s_inequality if the function is convex or concave.

Related Question