Assumptions regarding distribution of continuous variables
- Assume continuous normal distribution whenever
justified!
- Statistics that assume Gaussian are called parametric
statistics
- includes most common stats, such as the mean, SD, and t-test
- Statistics for continuous variables that do not assume Gaussian are
called nonparametric statistics
- There are nonparametric versions of most parametric statistics,
but they are less “efficient”
- Note: one can test whether a distribution is normal.