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Understanding the Normal Curve Properties

The normal curve is a bell-shaped, symmetrical distribution with the mean, median, and mode at the center. It gradually decreases in frequency as you move away from the center and has the same proportion of scores under the curve for standardized scores (z-scores) across all normal distributions. The normal distribution table can be used to find the proportion under the curve for any given z-score.

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129 views1 page

Understanding the Normal Curve Properties

The normal curve is a bell-shaped, symmetrical distribution with the mean, median, and mode at the center. It gradually decreases in frequency as you move away from the center and has the same proportion of scores under the curve for standardized scores (z-scores) across all normal distributions. The normal distribution table can be used to find the proportion under the curve for any given z-score.

Uploaded by

Leung Yi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Normal Curve

Recall that the normal curve has four important properties:


1. Bell-shaped
2. Symmetrical
mean=median=mode at center of distribution
left-hand side (below mean) mirrors right-hand side (above mean)
3. Asymptotic
the frequency gradually decreases as you move out from the center (mean).
4. All normal curves have the same proportion of scores under the curve relative to a particular
location on the horizontal axis when scores are standardized (expressed in standard deviation
units called Z-scores)
The figure below shows the percentages under the normal curve associated with 1, 2, and 3 standard
deviations above and below the mean. Note that each side of the curve (above and below the mean) is
half of the distribution (50%).

A Z- score (also called standard score) is the number of standard deviations that a given raw score is
above or below the mean.

Y Y
Sy

We can also find a raw score given a Z-score using the following formula (an algebraic transformation of
the above formula):

The normal distribution table (Appendix B) tells you the proportion under the curve for all Z-scores.

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