Ed Psy 641

June 29th, 2009

Normal Curve
The Normal Curve holds up well in many areas of

biological and psychological differences. Examples

include:

Height
Weight
Intelligence

Normal Distribution of Statistics

Statistics such as the mean and standard deviation

if repeatedly sampled will produce a normal

distribution as well.
We will find that this is an important characteristic
of our means and standard deviations later as well.

Fitting the Theoretical to the Sample

We look to see whether the theoretical model of a

normal curve adequately describes a sample.

In essence we want to see if the following is true for
our sample
Model = Observed Data + Error
Normal Distribution = Mean + Standard Deviation

Figure 6.1

Characteristics of a Normal Curve

A normal curve also has the following

characteristics:
It is unimodal.
It is symmetrical.
Normal curves are bell shaped.
The curves float above the x-axis in theory. This is
known technically as asymptotic distribution of the
population. It never ends in either direction.

Central Tendency
The first two characteristics of the normal curve

provide that the normal curve with an additional

property that all measures of central tendency will
be equal.
One method of determining if the curve is normally
distributed is to see if the mean, median, and mode
are all equal.

Commonness in the Normal

Distribution
One way of thinking about how common a score is

what percentage of people fall in that range.

68% of people fall with in 1 SD of the mean
95% fall within 2 SD
If you think back to the box graphs we can think
about the 25% and 75% as being a similar but
smaller measure of commonness

Figure 6.2

Normal Curves
There are precise relationships between the area

under the normal curve and units of standard

deviations
See Figure Figure 6.15 in following slide

So in a normal distribution 34.13% of the cases fall between the

mean and 1 standard deviation.
Since normal distribution is a mirror image then 34.13 % fall 1
standard deviation above the mean and 34.13% fall below the
mean
So you could say that about 68% (34.13 + 34.13) of all scores
are + or 1 standard deviation from the mean

Figure 6.15

z- Score
A z-score is a standard score that provides us with

the relative distance of a score from the mean.

This can be quite helpful when thinking about how
similar and different scores can be. For example if
I have a score that is at the 16th percentile that
sounds bad to most people. But to a psychologist it
is average.

Formula 6.1

z-Score continued
By the same token a percentile rank of the 85th

percentile sounds great. But it is still average.

I can show this by stating average falls between a z
of -1.0 and 1.0. Both of these scores fall within this
range.

z-scores and tails

I have a similar problem with tails in my

distribution. If I have someone that scores more

than 2 Standard Deviations from the mean then
they fall within the 2nd percentile or conversely the
98th percentile. It becomes hard to convey
exceptionality using percentiles at this level.
However, a z-score of 6.0 vs 3.0 does this quite
clearly.

Calculating z-scores
There are two critical parts to the z-score

First, the distance from the mean is calculated by:

X - mean

Second, we use the standard deviation to help us determine

how far from the mean our score falls, so we divide the
above by the SD.

Z = x mean
SD

We are now able to talk about the individual score

in standard units of measure for our sample from

the mean.

Limits and Advantages of Z-scores

Z-scores have problems if they are used with non-

normal distributions
They do however allow us to begin to estimate the
size of an effect on an individual.