z Scores

A Really Big Idea Examples		< back		14 of 21		next >

Our Physics students: The score of 60 was 1 SD (Z= 1.0) above the mean. The table would tell me that there are 84.13% of scores below. The score of 84 was 3.4 SDs above the mean (Z = 3.4). The table tells me that there were 99.97% scores below it. No wonder these kids are happy.

Our poor French student: The score of 60 was 1 SD below the mean (Z = - 1.0). The table would tell me that there were 15.87% scores below it.

You can do this with any score if you have a normal distribution.