Re: Riddle me this

On Mon, 07 Nov 2005 10:47:02 GMT, "Sharp Tool"
<sharp.tool@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone
who said :

>My questions is now, how does one determine the distribution of data?

One way is to do a histogram.

If you see a bell shaped curve coming out, you likely have a normal
distribution.

Various other distributions have a characteristic shape.

One that comes up often is called Poisson. It looks like a skewed
bell shaped curve with the right hand side stretched out.
see http://www.math.csusb.edu/faculty/stanton/probstat/poisson.html
How long you wait for bus might follow a Poisson distribution.

Geometric is a falling off. see
http://www.stats.gla.ac.uk/steps/glossary/probability_distributions.html#geomdistn

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Java custom programming, consulting and coaching.
.

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