What is a Normal Distribution?



Normal distributions are a family of distributions that have the same general shape. They are symmetric with scores more concentrated in the middle than in the tails. Normal distributions are sometimes described as bell shaped.

Examples of normal distributions are shown below. Notice that they differ in how spread out they are. The area under each curve is the same. The height of a normal distribution can be specified mathematically in terms of two parameters: the mean (μ) and the standard deviation (σ).

normal distributions

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