Example:
Prob(|Z|>=1.96) <= 0.04999565
Characteristics:
This is not a test, but a distribution. The Normal distribution, or Gaussian
distribution, is the statistical distribution. It's importance flows
from the fact that :
Z = (x-mean)/(standard deviation)
and has a mean value of zero and a standard deviation of one.
H0:
The distribution of Z has mean 0.
Assumptions:
Z has a Standard Normal distribution with mean = 0 and standard deviation = 1.
This "test" can only be used when there is no reason to
doubt this assumption.
Scale:
Interval
Procedure:
If the mean and standard deviation are not 0 and 1 respectively,
calculate
Z = (x-mean)/(standard deviation).
If x is the mean of a sample of size N, use
(population standard deviation)/sqrt(N) instead of
(population standard deviation).
Be aware that both the mean and the standard deviation must
be known a priori and should not be estimated from the sample
itself (use a
Student t-distribution if you do not know the mean and standard
deviation).
Level of significance:
Use a table to look up the level of significance associated with Z.
Approximation:
None
Remarks:
Most used "test" because it is the approximation of all other tests.
The example used here approximates the Standard Normal distribution with
an error < 1.5 * 10(-7) (
Abramowitz and Stegun 1965 (1970), p932, 26.2.17)