Exercise: continuous distributions and the Normal

24 Jun 2015

#Objective We are talking about continuous distributions and the Normal distribution. Pretty simple exercise, hoping to drive at an intuitive understanding of probability density and probability mass.

Exercise

Questions

  1. In just a couple of sentences: Why do we say that discrete distributions have a probability mass function (pmf) and continuous distributions have a probability density function (pdf)?

Hint: think of a couple of examples we have worked on. We calculated the probability that a shooter makes exactly 6 free throws - compare this to the probability that one ant weighs exactly 3.0mg.

  1. Sketch the probability density function for a $N(0,1)$ distribution. About how much probability mass falls between -2 and 1 on the horizontal axis?

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