Hi all, I've got a question about distributions, it might require a philosophical answer, what makes particular distributions of interest (e.g. the normal, chi-square, etc.) How did statisticians discover these distributions and why did they think that they are of importance?
Second question: I cannot grasp the practical implications or meaning of normality in a data set, when is it ok to assume normality and why not assume something else, for example, in linear regression when it is assumed that the errors are normal... what does that really mean graphically, does it mean that plotting the errors in the sample we have will show as a normal curve??? Third question: When we assume that the variance is constant, say the error term in linear regression, does that mean that the error term for each data point is equally dispersed around the fitted curve? I know some question might not be phrased properly but any help or corrections with these questions will be highly appreciated. Fahd . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
