  The beta family owes its privileged status within unit interval distributions
to several relevant features such as, for example, easyness of interpretation
and versatility in modeling different types of data. However, its flexibility
at the unit interval endpoints is poor enough to prevent from properly modeling
the portions of data having values next to zero and one. Such a drawback can be
overcome by resorting to the class of the non-central beta distributions.
Indeed, the latter allows the density to take on arbitrary positive and finite
limits which have a really simple form. That said, new insights into such class
are provided in this paper. In particular, new representations and moments
expressions are derived. Moreover, its potential with respect to alternative
models is highlighted through applications to real data.
