Gordon Kenyon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in sci.stat.edu:
>In quantitative methods text-books for the social and behavioral
>sciences one constantly sees the equation which describes the pdf for
>both normal distributions in general and the standard normal
>distribution. I have never seen any basic warning that this
>"description" of the standard normal distribution is only the density
>function and not a computing formula of any kind.
It's not? I'm pretty sure that in the past I have computed the
population between two z scores by computing the definite integral
with those z scores as limits. Granted, it's a lot more efficient to
use a table or a calculator (and in fact I used my TI89 to calculate
the definite integral).
Perhaps I am failing to understand what you mean by "a computing
formula"?
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://oakroadsystems.com
"Boy Critical After Rescue From River"
-- headline in the /Cortland Standard/ 16 April 2002
Gosh, there's just no pleasing some people.
.
.
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