How to Use This Table
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The table below contains the area under the standard normal curve
from 0 to z. This can be used to compute the
cumulative distribution function values
for the standard normal distribution.
The table utilizes the symmetry of the normal distribution, so what
in fact is given is
where a is the value of interest. This is demonstrated in
the graph below for a = 0.5. The shaded area of the curve
represents the probability that x is between 0 and a.
This can be clarified by a few simple examples.
- What is the probability that x is less than or equal to
1.53? Look for 1.5 in the X column, go right to the 0.03 column
to find the value 0.43699. Now add 0.5 (for the probability
less than zero) to obtain the final result of 0.93699.
- What is the probability that x is less than or equal to
-1.53? For negative values, use the relationship
\( P[x \le a] = 1 - P[x \le |a|] \;\;\;\;\; \mbox{for $x < 0$} \)
From the first example, this gives 1 - 0.93699 = 0.06301.
- What is the probability that x is between -1 and 0.5?
Look up the values for 0.5 (0.5 + 0.19146 = 0.69146) and
-1 (1 - (0.5 + 0.34134) = 0.15866). Then subtract the
results (0.69146 - 0.15866) to obtain the result 0.5328.
To use this table with a non-standard normal distribution (either
the location parameter is not 0 or the scale parameter is not 1),
standardize your value by subtracting the mean and dividing
the result by the standard deviation. Then look up the value
for this standardized value.
A few particularly important numbers derived from the table below,
specifically numbers that are commonly used in significance tests, are
summarized in the following table:
p
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0.001
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0.005
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0.010
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0.025
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0.050
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0.100
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Zp
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-3.090
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-2.576
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-2.326
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-1.960
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-1.645
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-1.282
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p
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0.999
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0.995
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0.990
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0.975
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0.950
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0.900
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Zp
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+3.090
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+2.576
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+2.326
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+1.960
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+1.645
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+1.282
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These are critical values for the normal distribution.
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