“High Achievers Use Bell Curves to Get Ahead of The Pack” Preview KEW Episode 98: The Normal Curve

You hated statistics, right? And probably didn’t care too much about math?

That’s how most people are, anyway. I didn’t really see the point in learning much of the numbers stuff, until I needed the knowledge.

Household budgeting, running a business, and understanding what other people are trying to say are just three reasons to understand math and mathematical relationships. This Episode is an example.

The normal, or ‘bell’ curve, or normal distribution, is a numerical representation of a fairly universal phenomenon. The concepts of average, variance, maximum, minimum, and range are all cooped up inside this familiar shape.

The majority of points under the bell curve represent similar measurements, or approximate the average value. The ‘tails’ of the curve represent extreme measurements. For example, adult human male height. Most men will fall under the middle of the bell, averaging 5’6″ (I looked it up), with the tails being shorter men (4′ something?) and taller men (7′ and taller). There are more average height men and fewer short and tall men. That’s a normal distribution.

Nearly all of math and statistics assumes whatever you are measuring comes from a population that approximates this normal curve shape.

This week I’ll talk about why this matters.