Skewness and kurtosis are used to measure the shape of data. Skewness measures the asymmetry of data, whether the distribution has a longer tail on the right or left side. Kurtosis measures the peakedness of a distribution, with a normal distribution having a kurtosis of 0. Both skewness and kurtosis are calculated using formulas involving the sum of the cubed and squared deviations of the data from the mean.