1. What are the characteristics of the normal curve? What human behavior, trait, or characteristic can you think of that is distributed normally?

2. Standard scores, such as z scores, allow us to make comparisons across different samples. Why?

3. Why is a z score a standard score, and why can standard scores be used to compare scores from different distributions with one another?

4. Compute the z scores for the following raw scores where X = 50 and the standard deviation = 5.

a) 55
b) 50
c) 60
d) 57.5
e) 46

7. Jake needs to score in the top 10% in order to earn a physical fitness certificate. The class mean is 78 and the standard deviation is 5.5. What raw score does he need to get that valuable piece of paper?

9. Who is the better student, relative to his or her classmates? Here's all the information you need to know...

Math

Class Mean 81
Class Standard Deviation 2

Reading

Class Mean 87
Class Standard Deviation 10

Raw Scores

Math  Score Reading Score Average
Noah  85           88            86.5
Talya  87           81             84

z Scores

Math Score Reading Score Average

Noah __________ _______ _____
Talya __________ _______ _____