ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the normal or gaussian distribution. Gaussian distributions are important because they often approximate distributions occurring in nature. Other distributions, such as Poisson distributions, binomial distributions, approximate to normal when the sample size is large. But there is a further reason for the importance of normal distributions. The chapter looks at how normal distributions fit into statistical theory. Gaussian or normal distributions are important because of sampling distributions and the central limit theorem. The chapter explains sampling distribution. The mean of the sampling distribution will be the same as the mean of the population. The importance of the normal distribution is that generally, no matter what the population distribution, the sampling distribution will be normal as long as the samples are sufficiently large. The chapter considers the calculations that have been using the normal distribution tables.
