Which of the folliwing data sets could most likely be normally distributed?

Question

Height of flowers, monthly total precipitation for the state of Utah, number of home runs per baseball player in a championship series, daily stock reports from the stock market, or none of the above?

Answer 1

A normal distribution has the following properties:

1) The mean has the highest probability of being measured. In other words, the probability has a peak at the mean.

2) Roughly 68% of the data can be found within 1 standard deviation of the mean, roughly 95% can be found within 2 standard deviations of the mean, and roughly 99.8% can be found within 3 standard deviations of the mean.

3) The curve that forms a normal distribution is symmetrical about the mean and has two tails.

Data that is significantly concentrated around the mean, with progressively fewer data points for values far away from the mean in both directions, is likely to be normally distributed.

The question is a bit vague because very few details are given for each option. I believe that an argument can be made for each option being normally distributed, and the likelihood in each case is difficult to measure because of the limited information. Hopefully this response teaches you a little bit about normal distributions and can help you choose an answer!