# Formulas > Descriptive Statistics > Kurtosis

Kurtosis is a measure of the peakedness of a distribution. A high kurtosis indicates a sharper peak and flatter tails, whereas a low kurtosis indicates a rounder peak and wider shoulders.

The formula for kurtosis that is unbiased and centered at 0 is

where
= data set
= number of data values in
= mean of the data set
= standard deviation of the data set

The formula for kurtosis that is biased and centered at 3 is