High School

In a normal distribution, approximately what percentage of data falls within one standard deviation of the mean?

A) [tex]$50 \%$[/tex]
B) [tex]$68 \%$[/tex]
C) [tex]$95 \%$[/tex]
D) [tex]$99.7 \%$[/tex]

Answer :

In a normal distribution, data is symmetrically distributed around the mean, creating a bell-shaped curve. One of the key features of a normal distribution is how the data is spread in relation to the standard deviation.

The standard deviation is a measure of how spread out the data is from the mean, and there are specific percentages of data that fall within certain numbers of standard deviations from the mean in a normal distribution:

1. Within one standard deviation (from the mean):
- Approximately 68% of the data falls within this range.
- This means if you go one standard deviation above the mean and one standard deviation below the mean, you would encompass about 68% of the data.

2. Within two standard deviations (from the mean):
- Approximately 95% of the data falls within this range.

3. Within three standard deviations (from the mean):
- Approximately 99.7% of the data falls within this range.

For the given question, we are interested only in the data within one standard deviation of the mean. Thus, the correct answer is:

- B) 68%

This means in a normal distribution, approximately 68% of the data falls within one standard deviation from the mean.