Assume that human body temperatures are normally distributed with a mean of 98.23°F and standard deviation of .64°F. The hospital uses 100.6°F as the lowest temperature considered to be a fever. What percentage of normal and healthy person's would be considered to have a fever? Does this percentage suggest that a cut off of 100.6°F is appropriate? Physicians want to select a minimum temperature for requiring further medical test. What should the temperature be if we want only 5% of healthy people to exceed it?

Features Features Normal distribution is characterized by two parameters, mean (µ) and standard deviation (σ). When graphed, the mean represents the center of the bell curve and the graph is perfectly symmetric about the center. The mean, median, and mode are all equal for a normal distribution. The standard deviation measures the data's spread from the center. The higher the standard deviation, the more the data is spread out and the flatter the bell curve looks. Variance is another commonly used measure of the spread of the distribution and is equal to the square of the standard deviation.