Exercise: continuous distributions and the Normal
#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
- 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.
- 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?