Are these expressions equivalent? ? if so

No they are not because if you distribute the (invisible) -1 the equations are not equal. ;)

Yes this is equivalent

Because brackets are useless in this case,,, beackets will be consider if in question uses other symbol in place of minus (-)

Ifound this on google “a skewed (non-symmetric) distribution is a distribution in which there is no such mirror-imaging. a "skewed right" distribution is one in which the tail is on the right side. a "skewed left" distribution is one in which the tail is on the left side. the above histogram is for a distribution that is skewed right.” i hope this you for what your looking for