The normal distribution, also known as the Gaussian distribution or bell curve, is widely used in science. It is a probability distribution that has the following properties. The distribution has a single peak located at the mean. Furthermore, the mean, median and mode are all equal, so they also correspond to the location of the highest point in a normal distribution. The distribution is symmetric. In other words, it has no skew. It is parametric meaning that the distribution is completely characterized by two parameters: the mean and standard deviation. The normal distribution is "light tailed". This means that as you move away from the mean, the probabilities get small very quickly.One of the reasons that the normal distribution is used so widely is that is arises naturally in many real world situations.
