By: Ashish Agarwal

The normal distribution is a continuous probability distribution that has a bell-shaped probability density function, known as the gaussian function or informally the bell curve:

where parameter is the mean or expectation (location of the peak) and 2 is the variance. is known as the standard deviation.

The bell shaped curve has several properties:

The curve concentrated in the center and decreases on either side. This means that the data has less of a tendency to produce unusually extreme values, compared to some other distributions. The bell shaped curve is symmetric. This tells you that the probability of deviations from the mean are comparable in either direction.

Standard Normal Distribution

The distribution with = 0 and 2 = 1 is called the standard normal distribution or the unit normal distribution.

The factor 1/2 in this expression ensures that the total area under the curve f(x) is equal to one, 1/2 in the exponent makes the "width" of the curve also equal to one.

The following is the plot of the standard normal probability density function.

Suppose following is the X, values, 96.3 96.4 96.7 96.7 96.8 96.9 97 97.1 97.1 97.1. The mean of this data is 96.81. Std. deviation =0.273679. By using the normal distribution equation f(x) is calculated and plotted against x to get normal distribution curve.

3-sigma rule
Every normal curve (regardless of its mean or standard deviation) conforms to the rule known as 68-95-99.7 rule, or the empirical rule, or the 3-sigma rule.

About 68% of the area under the curve falls within 1 standard deviation of the mean. About 95% of the area under the curve falls within 2 standard deviations of the mean. About 99.7% of the area under the curve falls within 3 standard deviations of the mean.

There are two principal applications of the normal distribution to engineering and reliability. One application deals with the analysis of items which exhibit failure due to wear, such as mechanical devices.

Another application is in the analysis of manufactured items and their ability to meet specifications. It establishes that design must take this part variability into account, otherwise the system may not meet the specification requirement due to the combined effect of part variability.

Another aspect of this application is in quality control procedures.

The variations in value of electronic component parts, for example, due to manufacturing are considered normally distributed.

In biology, the logarithm of various variables tend to have a normal distribution.

In finance, changes in the logarithm of exchange rates, price indices, and stock market indices are assumed normal distribution.

Measurement errors in physical experiments are often modeled by a normal distribution.

In standardized testing, results can be made to have a normal distribution. In hydrology the distribution of long duration river discharge or rainfall, e.g. monthly and yearly totals, is often thought to be practically normal according to the central limit theorem.

In computer simulations, it is often desirable to generate values that are normally distributed. Thus it finds application in modelling and simulation.

Thank You