[R-sig-teaching] About the standard gaussian distribution

[Michael Weylandt]

I agree that, for an intro class, working with the z-score + standard
normal is probably unnecessary.

If your students go further, it's a useful example of the idea of a
pivot, but you can probably explain that when they get there.

On Thu, Apr 20, 2017 at 10:07 AM, David Monterde <dmonterde at me.com> wrote:
> First of all I have to apologize because my english is horrible.
>
> I am working in a basic and practical statistic course.
>
> I will speak about confidence intervals, of course.
>
> But when I was preparing this chapter I had a doubt: I wonder if it has sence today to explain the confidence intervals for a mean in terms of the standard normal distribution.
>
> If we show that the mean follows a normal distribution with variance/n then it is easy to explain (and to understand) that the confidence interval is due to two percentiles, the percentile alpha/2 and the percentile 1-alpha/2 from a normal distribution with the sample mean and the sample variance/n.
>
> I think that the standard gaussian distribution was usefull when we had to calculate CI in the past.
> That is, it was a simple way to have all possibilities in a single table (in paper).
>
> But now, we have R functions that let us to obtain the exact values for any normal distribution.
>
> I think that is not necessary to explain how to work with transformations if we can explain that a CI is simply to identify percentiles.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Thanks
>
> PD I know that the normal distribution for CI need some hipothesis. But I have focused the question
>
> _________________________
>
> David Monterde
>
> Lo difícil se hace.
> Lo imposible se intenta.
> _________________________
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>
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