If the median and mean are significantly far from each other than that's an immediate indication that the distributon is skewed, and we also know to what side.

If the median and mean are significantly far from each other than that's an immediate indication that the distributon is skewed, and we also know to what side. If you know the sample size you can also get a degree of skew from this. I challenge you to tell me any other two numbers that can give you that much info by themselves with no knowledge of the underlying distribution.