ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the major characteristics of the normal distribution and how it is used descriptively and how the normal distribution is used inferentially as an assumption for certain statistical tests. The normal distribution is a standard curve because it is always symmetric around the mean, unimodal, and bell-shaped. The chapter also discusses the normal distribution and utilizes the normal table, determines and interprets different types of standard scores, particularly z scores, and interpret skewness and kurtosis statistics. Skewness refers to the lack of symmetry of a distribution of scores and kurtosis refers to the peakedness of a distribution of scores. Skewness and kurtosis statistics are useful for the following two reasons: as descriptive statistics used to describe the shape of a distribution of scores, and in inferential statistics, which often assume a normal distribution, so the researcher has some indication of whether the assumption has been met.
