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You don't know what a bell curve is? Where did you go to school? A bell curve is a graph of a NORMAL DISTRIBUTION of virtually any trait within a population. The classic example is plotting heights within a class of children. (I can't believe you never did this at school). Starting at the bottom left corner we see the small number of very short children, moving to the middle of the graph the curve rises as the majority of the class is of average height (average for that group) and the right hand tail of the graph shows the small number of particularly tall children. The curve resembles a classic bell shape. The larger the sample of examples the more nearly the curve fits to the classic bell shape. If you plotted the entire human race the curve would be very smooth indeed. What you can do for heights you can do for anything else, including IQ scores, weight, age of death, income and propensity to commit criminal acts. Any population that has diversity within it will yield a bell curve. Sometimes it will be skewed to the left or right, sometimes it will be very sharply defined around a median figure other times the distribution will be very broad. Populations of anything in the natural world usually fall into a normal distribution pattern, with most values falling in the middle of the range and smaller numbers to either side. If you plot the income curve of a capitalist economy it will have a left skewed plot, the majority of people will be earning less than the mean (average) income, the mean will be pulled out strongly to the right by a small handful of the very rich. From the origin the curve will rise almost sheer because of the large number of people who earn next to nothing, then it will reach a peak just past the “minimum wage” level and then tail off slowly reflecting the smaller numbers of people who earn up to five times the minimum wage level. Then it drops off rapidly to a near horizontal trace reflecting the fact that less than 1% of the population earn obscene levels of income. If you ever hear anybody use the phrase “how the other half live” about the rich please correct them; they might own the other half of the world's resources but they are less than 1% of the human race. |
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