In certain nerve cells, spontaneous electrical discharges are observed that are so rhythmically repetitive that they are called “clock spikes.” The timing of these spikes, even though remarkably regular, does exhibit variation. In one study, the interspike-time intervals (in milliseconds) for a single housefly (Musca domestica) were observed to follow a Normal distribution with mean 16.5 milliseconds and standard deviation 0.4 milliseconds. (a) A randomly selected housefly has a interspike-time interval of 16.59 milliseconds. What is the -score for this fly? (b) Fill in the blanks: Another randomly selected housefly has -score of -2.08 . This tells us that the interspike-time interval for this fly is __________ standard deviations __________ the mean. (c)Find the interspike-time interval for the fly with a -score of -2.08 .
Continuous Probability Distributions
Probability distributions are of two types, which are continuous probability distributions and discrete probability distributions. A continuous probability distribution contains an infinite number of values. For example, if time is infinite: you could count from 0 to a trillion seconds, billion seconds, so on indefinitely. A discrete probability distribution consists of only a countable set of possible values.
Normal Distribution
Suppose we had to design a bathroom weighing scale, how would we decide what should be the range of the weighing machine? Would we take the highest recorded human weight in history and use that as the upper limit for our weighing scale? This may not be a great idea as the sensitivity of the scale would get reduced if the range is too large. At the same time, if we keep the upper limit too low, it may not be usable for a large percentage of the population!
In certain nerve cells, spontaneous electrical discharges are observed that are so rhythmically repetitive that they are called “clock spikes.” The timing of these spikes, even though remarkably regular, does exhibit variation. In one study, the interspike-time intervals (in milliseconds) for a single housefly (Musca domestica) were observed to follow a
(a) A randomly selected housefly has a interspike-time interval of 16.59 milliseconds. What is the -score for this fly?
(b) Fill in the blanks: Another randomly selected housefly has -score of -2.08 . This tells us that the interspike-time interval for this fly is __________ standard deviations __________ the mean.
(c)Find the interspike-time interval for the fly with a -score of -2.08 .
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