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Prior to beginning work on this discussion forum, view the Statistics Is About People, Even if You Can't See the Tears video by clicking the image below.

The video makes the point that though nobody wants to think that they are a statistic, acting as if you are a statistic can help you make better decisions. That said, statisticians should never forget that the numbers they analyze correspond to real people, who have friends, relatives, and stories to tell.

Respond to one of the following options in your initial post, citing at least one specific credible source in support. Question on credible sources? See the  Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) .

Option 1: The experience of taking this course may have impacted your way of looking at statistics and charts you encounter in your professional and personal life.

· Assess where you were in the beginning of the course in terms of your knowledge and skill set and whether your critical thinking skills have increased during this class and provide an example to support your response.

· Be sure to mention how you might use the skills not only in your future college classes but also in your chosen profession.

· From this example, pull out specific skills you have acquired that could be listed on a resume or included in a LinkedIn profile.

Option 2: The reason so many of us now live long and healthy lives is due to statistical analyses of health data.

· Provide a specific example in which statistical analyses have had a significant impact on how we live our lives.

· Briefly elaborate on its impact.

Option 3: Respond to the following questions.

· Why do you think statistics often has a bad name?

· Why do you think people often feel that “the statistics do not apply to me”?

· Has your increased knowledge of statistics changed your attitude or behavior?

· Briefly discuss your changed attitude or behavior the context of a specific example.

Your initial post should be at least 200 words in length.

Option 2

Blood pressure is an example of a variable that follows a normal distribution. In the case of blood pressure, normal distribution contributes remarkably in my personal life because at any given time, I can effectively measure whether my state of health is within the mean pressure of the population. The fact that the population's mean and the standard deviation are well known across different health centers means it is quite easy to check a person's blood pressure readings. In most cases, the normal distribution curve for blood pressure is bell-shaped and can be determined by mean and standard deviation (Trafimow, Wang & Wang, 2018). Hence, normal distribution plays a significant role in ensuring that regulation is maintained to keep it normal throughout.

Normal distribution refers to a distribution of data sets that have equal median, mode, and mean values. A standard normal distribution has a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. According to Reid (2010), “change in the prevalence of raised blood pressure could be due to both shifts in the entire distribution of blood pressure and changes in its high-blood-pressure tail”. By using normal distribution approximation, one is able to approximate the range and probability of a big population using a small sample. In healthy adults, systolic blood pressure has a normal distribution with a mean of 112 mmHg and standard deviation of 10mmHg.

References

Reid, S. (2010). What is so normal about the normal distribution?.

Trafimow, D., Wang, T., & Wang, C. (2018). Means and standard deviations, or locations and scales? That is the question!. New Ideas in Psychology, 50, 34-37.