If a set of exam scores forms a negatively skewed distribution, what can you conclude about the students' scores?

• A. Most of the students had relatively high scores
• B. Most of the students had relatively low scores
• C. About 50% had high scores and the rest low
• D. It is not possible to draw any conclusions about students' scores

Answer: (A)

When a distribution is negatively skewed, the long tail appears on the left with a cluster of scores toward the high end. This means most students earned relatively high scores, while a few very low scores pull the average down. So the best takeaway is that most students did well. The other ideas don’t fit: a left-skew pattern doesn’t indicate most scores are low, and a roughly even split would imply symmetry rather than skewness. Additionally, in this pattern the mean tends to be lower than the median due to those low outliers, reinforcing that the bulk of scores are high.