Econophysics -- dumb question

Barry Rene DeCicco bdecicco at umich.edu
Fri Sep 8 08:16:03 PDT 2000


I'm not sure who wrote this orginally, but:

Start quote:

I have a dumb question about econophysics.

If the native or raw ability to acquire wealth is distributed randomly, we ought to see a bell curve of abilities, whether of individuals or groups.

End quote.

The 'bell curve' is simply *a* statistical distribution. Randomly distributed things do not have to fall in a bell curve distribution. The normal distribution has a lot of nice properties, and so people doing statistics (over)use it a lot. It's also the only one which sticks in the minds of people who've had a single statistics course.

Barry



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