Figure 6.1 If you ask enough people about their shoe size, you will find that your graphed data is shaped like a bell curve and can be described as normally distributed. (credit: Ömer Ünlϋ)

The normal, a continuous distribution, is the most important of all the distributions. It is widely used and even more widely abused. Its graph is bell-shaped. You see the bell curve in almost all disciplines, including psychology, business, economics, the sciences, nursing, and, of course, mathematics. Some of your instructors may use the normal distribution to help determine your grade. Most IQ scores are normally distributed. Often, real-estate prices fit a normal distribution. The normal distribution is extremely important, but it cannot be applied to everything in the real world.

In this chapter, you will study the normal distribution, the standard normal distribution, and applications associated with them.

The normal distribution has two parameters—two numerical descriptive measures—the mean (μ) and the standard deviation (σ). If X is a quantity to be measured that has a normal distribution with mean (μ) and standard deviation (σ), we designate this by writing

Figure 6.2

The curve is symmetric about a vertical line drawn through the mean, μ. In theory, the mean is the same as the median, because the graph is symmetric about μ. With a normal distribution, the mean, median, and mode all lie at the same point. The normal distribution depends only on the mean and the standard deviation. The location of the mean simply indicates the location of the line of symmetry, in a normal distribution. Since the area under the curve must equal one, a change in the standard deviation, σ, causes a change in the shape of the curve; the curve becomes fatter or skinnier depending on σ. A change in μ causes the graph to shift to the left or right. The location of the mean simply indicates the location of the line of symmetry, in a normal distribution. This means there are an infinite number of normal probability distributions. One distribution of special interest is called the standard normal distribution.