Instead, I'm going to take a different approach here. I'm going to wave my arms a lot, and give you enough examples to convince you that the normal distribution is not only correct, but is inevitable.

This wonderfully animated applet helps users understand the sample mean's properties, using simulated fish length data which is assumed to come from a normal distribution. Users can choose the sample ...

When to Use Normal Versus Lognormal Distribution The preceding example helped us arrive at what really matters to investors: when to use each method. Lognormal is extremely useful when analyzing ...

A normal distribution is a probability distribution of outcomes that are symmetrical or form a bell curve. In a normal distribution, 68% of the results fall within one standard deviation, and 95% ...

R. W. Farebrother, Algorithm AS 256: The Distribution of a Quadratic Form in Normal Variables, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series C (Applied Statistics), Vol. 39, No. 2 (1990), pp.