Moment Generating Function Explained

The n-th moment is E(X^n).

We are pretty familiar with the first two moments, the mean μ = E(X) and the variance E(X²) − μ². They are important characteristics of X. The mean is the average value and the variance is how spread out the distribution is. But there must be other features as well that also define the distribution. For example, the third moment is about the asymmetry of a distribution. The fourth moment is about how heavy its tails are.

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