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st: RE: Why many things have Normal distribution
From
Joe Canner <[email protected]>
To
"[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject
st: RE: Why many things have Normal distribution
Date
Thu, 29 Aug 2013 19:42:18 +0000
It's not for nothing that the distribution is called the "Normal" distribution... ;)
If I were to hazard a guess as to the natural science explanation, I would probably invoke genetics. Reproduction tends to produce offspring that are identical (asexual) or similar (sexual) to the parents. Significant variations from this tendency occur rarely, as a result of mutation or unusual gene shuffling during meiosis. These variations tend not to accumulate in a population because they are not advantageous for survival or reproduction. (The exception, of course, is those few variations which *were* advantageous and resulted in evolution.) Thus, populations tend to remain stable, centered on whatever factors were present in the previous generation.
I hope I haven't butchered the biology too much; perhaps someone with more expertise in this area can explain why DNA recombination follows a normal distribution.
Regards,
Joe Canner
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
P.S. If you keep asking philosophical questions, you might get some pushback from people who are getting distracted from the work they should be doing. :)
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Marcos Vinicius
Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2013 2:28 PM
To: STATA LIST
Subject: st: Why many things have Normal distribution
hello,
Yesterday someone asked me a philosophical question :Why many things have Normal distribution ( or at least approximately)?
My answer: It is a type of symmetry we observe in nature.. maybe a String Theory specialist may have a technical answer.
How do you answer that question?
CLT maybe ?
Regards,
Vinicius
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