... Depends on the sampled population. If all children under 6, I'd expect it to be quite skew. If all second graders, I would expect it to be more symmetric. Though, sadly these days, there's probably a long tail to the right, at least in developed countries and especially here in the U.S..
Cheers, Bert On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 7:42 AM, csrabak <cra...@acm.org> wrote: > Em 14/12/2010 12:46, Matthew Rosett escreveu: >> >> How do I determine if my data deviate from the normal distribution? >> The sample size is 1000 (weights of people). >> > As others already posted about the Statistical theoretic aspects of it, I > want to add that weights of people are not normal distributed due > biological/physical reasons: > > There is a minimum weight an individual below no one can surpass; same for > maximum. > > Also the probabilities for symmetrical z scores are not the same, etc. > > This lead researchers in the area of anthropometrics to create > transformations on these distributions in order to be able to use test we're > are used to with normal distributions. > > See for an example: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2982992. > > -- > Cesar Rabak > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > -- Bert Gunter Genentech Nonclinical Biostatistics 467-7374 http://devo.gene.com/groups/devo/depts/ncb/home.shtml ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
