Figure 1.5 | Sample Right-Skewed and Left-Skewed Frequency Distributions | (a) This is an example of a right-skewed frequency distribution in which the tail of the distribution goes off to the right. In a right-skewed distribution, the mean is greater than the median because the unusually high scores distort it. (b) This is an example of a left-skewed frequency distribution in which the tail of the distribution goes off to the left. The mean is less than the median because the unusually low scores distort it.