You just made my whole point better than I did. Gauss gave us normal as a curve, and a curve moves with the crowd, which is exactly how smoking ended up normal. The older meaning comes from the carpenter's square, a standard you measure against. Smoking was normal by the curve the entire time it was wrong by the square. That gap is what the post is about.

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Chrigu's avatar
Chrigu 2 weeks ago
Fair. Gauss tried to answer what you can do if there is no square. If you simply don't know what is the "square" of a species heart rate. You can only measure so many samples and draw conclusions. That's why it's normal and not like optimal. I think this is the message people should learn; normal does not mean optimal! Never!
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