Clojure for Data Science

The normal distribution

A histogram will tell you approximately how data is distributed throughout its range, and provide a visual means of classifying your data into one of a handful of common distributions. Many distributions occur frequently in data analysis, but none so much as the normal distribution, also called the Gaussian distribution.

Note

The distribution is named the normal distribution because of how often it occurs in nature. Galileo noticed that the errors in his astronomical measurements followed a distribution where small deviations from the mean occurred more frequently than large deviations. It was the great mathematician Gauss' contribution to describing the mathematical shape of these errors that led to the distribution also ...