CABILLAN, SHARIENA S.

BS CRIM 1E

MATHEMATICS IN THE MODERN WORLD

NORMAL DISTRIBUTION

A normal distribution, sometimes called the bell curve, is a distribution that

occurs naturally in many situations.

The bell curve is symmetrical. Half of the data will fall to the left of the
mean; half will fall to the right.

Skewness is a measure of the asymmetry of the probability distribution of a real-

valued random variable about its mean. The skewness value can be positive or
negative, or undefined.

PROPERTIES OF A NORMAL PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTION

The distribution curve is bell – shaped.

The curve is symmetrical about its center and the skewness is 0.

The mean, the median and the mode coincide at the center.

The width of the curve is determined by the standard deviation of the

distribution.

The tails of the curve flatten out indefinitely along the horizontal axis, always
approaching the axis but never touching it. That is, the curve is asymptotic to
the base line.

The area under the curve is 1, thus, it represents the probability or proportion,
or the percentage associated with specific sets of measurement

THE STANDARD NORMAL CURVE

 A standard normal curve distribution is a normal probability distribution

has a mean µ = 0 and the standard deviation σ = 1.

Example 1: The test scores of a physics class with 800 students are distributed
normally with a mean of 75 and a standard deviation of 7.

a) What percentage of the class has a test score between 68 and 82?
b) Approximately how many students have a test score between 61 and 89?
c) What is the probability that a student chosen at random has a test score
between 54 and 75?

d) Approximately how many students have a test score greater than or equal 96?
a)
 b)

c)

d)

THE Z - SCORE

 The areas under the normal curve are given in terms of z – values/scores.
Either the z – scores locates X within a sample or within a population.
X−μ
The formula for calculating z is Z= (z-score for population data)
σ
Where:

X – Given measurement µ - population mean σ – Population standard

deviation

Example 2: ACT Scores are normally distributed with mean of 24.2 and standard
deviation of 4.2. What is the Probability that a student scores greater than 31?
Example 4: (Solving the area under the normal curve)

The temperature of heated water in a coffee maker is a continuous random variable

that follows a normal distribution with a mean of 92 degrees Celsius and a
standard deviation of 2 degrees Celsius. What is the probability that temperature
of the heated water is greater than 94 degrees Celsius?

Example 5: (Solving the values of a random variable)

The scores of students who took a 100-item exam resemble a normal distribution
with a mean of 85 and a standard deviation of 5. Mrs. Cruz would like to get the
lowest 10% of the scores and invite those students for a remedial class. What
range of scores indicates inclusion in the remedial class?

Example 6: (Solving the values of a random variable)

Ten thousands university applicants took a 200-item entrance test. The scores of
the applicants were recorded and were found to be normally distributed with a
mean of 150 and a standard deviation of 25. If the university is only accepting
2000 applicants, what must be the cut off scores to get into the university?