Give business examples of a population that has a normal distribution

Hi,

A normal distribution means simply that the results are usually close
to the average, with only a few that are extremely different.

Here are some business-oriented examples:

-- A store sells 16-ounce boxes of cereal.  Although there will be
some variation in actual weight, most will be very close to 16 ounces.
 The actual weights is an example of a normal distribution.

-- Sales on a given day of the week at a large store (especially if
holiday sales are excluded).

-- Amount paid for a stock of Company X on a given day.  A stock might
be priced at, say, 14.00 per share.  On a given day, people may
actually pay from $13.95 to $14.05, for example.

-- The number of people having lunch at a large restaurant on a given
day of the week.  Ask a restaurant owner how many people will be
coming in on a certain day, and he/she can probably tell you.

-- In a large company, the number of people sick on a given day.

All of these above are somewhat random events, but they will tend to
be close to the average.  An example of a non-normal distribution
would be the number of years people have worked for a company. 
Although the average might be 10 years, there will be plenty of people
who have worked a year and plenty of have worked 20 years.

Here are some documents that further explain the concept of normal
distribution:

Standard Deviation (RobertNiles.com)
http://www.robertniles.com/stats/stdev.shtml

Examples on Normal Distribution
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~gsimon/normex2.PDF

Introduction to Business Statistics
http://www.pbs.org/als/intro_busstatistics/inbsbrochure.pdf

I hope this helps,

mvguy







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Good, helpful information.

Regarding the phrase above: "A normal distribution means simply that
the results are usually close to the average, with only a few that are
extremely different"; this is indeed a property held by some normal
distributions.

However, a distribution is normal only if it has various other
properties; that is, it is not the case that if a distribution
satisfies the property "the results are usually close to the average
with only a few that are extremely different" that that distribution
is necessarily normal. The web link
http://www.robertniles.com/stats/stdev.shtml given above is a bit
confusing in this respect I think.