SKEW Function (Calligra Sheets)

• Introduced: First release not established; the name is present in Calligra 2.4.0 source.
• Supported in: Calligra Sheets 26.08.2, with no retirement established.
• Scope: Desktop Sheets with the Statistical module. Examples use English semicolon-separated formulas.
• Checked: October 14, 2026. Selected formulas ran through the official 25.04.2 engine library. Source and independent mathematics were checked. This is engine evidence, with no GUI-cell or import verification; 26.08.2 was source-checked only.

SKEW calculates adjusted sample skewness: √(n(n−1))/(n−2) times the standardized third central moment. Positive values indicate a longer or heavier positive-side tail in this descriptive statistic; negative values indicate the opposite direction. It requires at least three observations and nonzero spread. Function help.

=SKEW(value1[;value2;...])

Supply one or more values, arrays or ranges. This engine fixture uses explicit scalar lists. The full-value aggregation defaults include text and logical values in the count; the tested conversions are shown rather than assumed to match other spreadsheet applications. Brackets indicate optional arguments and are not entered in the formula. Registration and implementation.

The engine and mathematical columns are separate. Results are rounded to twelve decimal places, or thirteen significant digits in scientific notation for very small or large values. This is a display choice, not an accuracy guarantee. NaN and infinity are nonfinite outputs; an engine error flag is checked separately from those values.

For 1,2,3,10, adjusted sample skewness is approximately 1.763632614804. The negative list −1,−2,−3,−10 gives the negative of that value. A symmetric list such as 1,2,3 has skewness zero, although zero skewness does not prove a normal distribution or rule out heavy tails.

Keep the observations and their units explicit. A single extreme value can strongly affect the third central moment, especially in a small sample; a descriptive statistic alone is not a reason to delete that value.

Adding a constant or multiplying all values by a positive constant leaves skewness unchanged. Multiplication by a negative constant reverses its sign. The reference table includes shifted and scaled copies, and the executed sum below verifies the sign reversal for a selected list.

This adjusted sample statistic differs from the unadjusted population third-moment ratio. For 1,1,1,2, the adjusted result is 2, whereas the population moment ratio is approximately 1.154700538379. The two formulas answer different normalization questions.

The executed advanced check was:

=SKEW(1;2;3;10)+SKEW(-1;-2;-3;-10)

Its engine result was 0.

In the tested English scalar-list calls, numeric text is parsed as a number: text “9” gives the same approximately 1.549131381257 result as numeric 9 when appended to 1,2,3,4. Nonnumeric text “abc” contributes zero; TRUE contributes one and FALSE contributes zero. These conversions follow the versioned numeric converter.

Appending text “5” also returns zero skewness, but for a different reason: the converted list is 1,2,3,4,5, which is symmetric. Appending “abc” makes 1,2,3,4,0, also symmetric. Equal final results do not establish identical conversions. Mixed types require a deliberate data policy; these English examples do not test other locales. Fewer than three values or constant values produce #VALUE!; an existing division error propagates.

• Function-specific implementation
• Versioned function help
• Shape Defaults helper
• Shape Aggregation helper
• Shape Walk helper
• Stddev helper

The statistical module and value-calculation helpers are byte-identical between the inspected 25.04.2 and 26.08.2 sources. That comparison supports the source discussion but does not establish later-version native output, every locale or arbitrary extreme-parameter accuracy.

AVERAGE, STDEV.