Andrew Bloomenthal has 20+ years of editorial experience as a financial journalist and as a financial services marketing writer. Samantha (Sam) Silberstein, CFP®, CSLP®, EA, is an experienced ...

Anyone familiar with basic statistics is familiar with the concept of a bell curve. A bell curve is a visual representation of normal data distribution, in which the median represents the highest ...

Mean-variance analysis is standard practice in many business schools and financial planning programs. You know the drill: take a pool of randomly selected data points such as stock returns measured ...

I can only recognize the occurrence of the normal curve … as a very abnormal phenomenon. — Karl Pearson (1901) Widely believed and rarely questioned is the notion that human characteristics, including ...

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and ...

Gaussian curves, normal curves and bell curves are synonymous. Each represents how statistical data with normal distribution plots on a graph. Normal distribution describes a particular way statistics ...

There is a long standing belief in business that people performance follows the Bell Curve (also called the Normal Distribution). This belief has been embedded in many business practices: performance ...

Life isn't fair. Many of the most coveted spoils -- wealth, fame, links on the Web -- are concentrated among the few. If such a distribution doesn't sound like the familiar bell-shaped curve, you're ...