Module 5: Textbook Flashcards
Normal Probability Distributions
normally distributed
when graphed they tend to be unimodal and symmetrical and appear as a bell-shaped distribution
naturally occurring data tend to be —
normally distributed
normal curve
graphical representation of the normal distribution
Normal curves portray situations where
there are many observations around some central point or measurement, with decreased observations the further the value is from the central point.
In extreme cases, the outlier(s) may severely distort the shape of the distribution. In such cases, the —- may be more useful as a measure of central tendency than the —-.
- median
- mean
The probability associated with a range of values in the normal distribution is equal to the —–. For example:
- corresponding area under the curve
- The area to the left or right of the mean corresponds to a probability of ½, or .5. The shaded area of the curve below accounts for one-half of the values in the distribution. It follows that if we were to randomly select a single value from the distribution, the probability of selecting a value from the shaded region would be equal to ½, or .5.
The total area under the normal curve is equal to –/If you were to sum the probabilities of every value in the distribution, they would sum to –
1
The normal curve approaches, but never —–. This is because there is —
- touches, the x-axis of the graph
- always a probability associated with any possible value of the continuous random variable, no matter how slight.
A normal distribution is defined by its —- and —-, which also determine —–.
- mean
- standard deviation
- the shape of the graphed normal curve representing the distribution
The greater the standard deviation of the distribution, the greater the “—–” of the distribution’s graphed normal curve.
spread
The common shape of normal curves is derived from the following properties (3):
- Normal curves are symmetric about the mean.
- All three measures of central tendency are the same in a perfect normal curve.
- The proportion of the areas between the standard deviations are known.
Finally, in any normal curve, the sections of the total area defined by the standard deviation are the same regardless of the value of the standard deviation. These percentages are the same for all normal distributions What are the %?
The empirical rule states that, for data with a symmetric, bell-shaped distribution like the normal curve shown below, the normal curve area has the following characteristics (3):
- About 68% of the data lie within one standard deviation of the mean.
- About 95% of the data lie within two standard deviations of the mean.
- About 99.7% of the data lie within three standard deviations of the mean.
Steps to determine if a sample of data comes from a normally distributed population (4)
- Create a grouped frequency distribution of the data to establish classes and frequencies.
- Create a histogram from the grouped data.
- Calculate the mean and standard deviation of the data.
- Determine the actual vs. expected proportion of scores in intervals.
Sampling distribution
a frequency distribution of the complete set of a statistic derived from random samples of a given size drawn from a population.