When Statistic Curve Says More Than Just A Statistic Value, It Says Things About Our Life

How can math relate to our life? Do you even realize their relationship? Is there really any connection? Yes, for sure.

Whether you are professional mathematicians or students in college that still learn about mathematics, I guarantee you have heard this incredible thing called distribution. For reader who is not familiar with mathematics, distribution is a tool that could examine and calculate probability of a specific random event. A mathematician or I would say Statistician often identify random events in our world then try to find a distribution that best describe those random events. In simple terms, let’s say you want to know exactly the probability of whether you are going to have a nice weather or the bad one in your town. You need to collect weather data on your town for at least 30 days. Yesterday was raining. The day before yesterday was raining. Today is sunny and so on. When you got all those data, you want to use statistic software to search for the best distribution that can represent your data and calculate the probability of weather in your town. As result, when you get a distribution that best describe your collected data, say Distribution X, you can start calculating how likely you are going to spend your day with the sun. Or whether you need to bring an umbrella if you consider going out somewhere. Of course, the whole process isn’t that simple, but I hope those who unfamiliar with mathematics could grasp the idea of distribution.

There are a lot of distributions, but the one I’m going to break down is maybe the most popular one called Normal Distribution. If this is your first time reading or hearing it, yes, this distribution got a unique name. But on the other side, is there anything called Not Normal Distribution? Yes, and a lot of them I’d say, even though their names are not as straight forward as “Not Normal Distribution”, all of them cause a headache when I studied them. In most cases, mathematics equations usually have a diagram or graphic interpretation. Since distribution is also a mathematics equation, all of them have diagram or graphic interpretation. For Normal Distribution case, it has graphic interpretation called Normal Curve.

In this article, by looking at this graph in a more philosophic perspective, I’m going to present my opinion on why this graph is called Normal Curve. Is there any connection between this graph and our life? Is there any meaningful value we could add to our life, despite its ability to solve many statistic problems?

Let’s take a look at this Normal Curve

Picture above shows a Normal Curve that everyone will find in statistic book or statistic software. But I want to take you out of mathematics realm for a while and modify the horizontal and vertical indicator a little bit.

Now, what you are seeing is Normal Curve with a modified horizontal and vertical axis. That Normal Curve is a curve that describe the phase of human life. Horizontal axis states time or in this case age while vertical axis states one’s achievement and success. When we see the curve this way, we get an interpretation like:

“A person born into this world, by the time goes by, this person climbing his way up in his/her school, work, family life. When this person reaches specific time x, he/she is in his/her prime and finally reach success and wealth. Then this person gets older, retires and eventually die.”

Depending on one’s behavior towards life, luck and efforts, every person could reach the “peak point” in the different time and in the different state. For those who are normal, they will peak most likely once in their lifetime.

Does this interpretation ring a bell in your mind? This curve seems tell us that we should be grateful with what we have, never comparing our self or our life with others and keep believing, do what we have to do until we all reach that peak point destined for us.

Now you might be thinking about someone you know, who got a lot of ups and downs in his/her life. A kid that was born into wealthy family, didn’t behave well and became poor in his/her thirties. Then start over and eventually became successful in his/her late sixty. My insight for you, for sure, that person is not normal! I mean, that person is outstanding!

Or you might be thinking about someone who has never been success or witnessing peak moment in his/her life. My view is, when what it takes to become success has not yet met, one shouldn’t give up. Keep climbing your life curve, taking on challenges, and be patient. By the way, according to this interpretation, when someone gives up in the midst of life journey and couldn’t reach the peak, well, that person is also considered not normal. It’s normal for you to keep struggling, and it’s normal for you to eventually succeed! If you manage to reach peak point or succeed, don’t be so full of yourself, because in the end of the day you are just a normal person, got it?