In sci.stat.consult you write:
>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 Sorry, no dice. It is impossible to analytically calculate a definite intergral of any normal distribution function unless you use some method from numerical analysis (See Feller). You can analytically calculate the indefinite integral of a normal distribution function but you have use a polar coordinate transformation and calculate a double integral (See Sheldon Ross, "A First Course in Probability" pp 200 for the proof.) . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
