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Purpose and Use of the Z-Score

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I need to explain the z-score, the purpose of it, and how it works, to an individual that has the reading and comprehensive level of a 10 year old (4th grader). Can you give me at least two examples to help him understand,

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The purpose and use of the z-score are examined.

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Imagine you have a large group of people. Just by looking at them, we can see how everyone looks different. Some people are short; some people are tall, where the majority of people are 'average height'.

If you were to record each person's height, and then plot it on a graph, you should get a shape that looks like a bell, called the bell curve. This shows us visually the spread of people's heights.

As I already stated, not everyone is average height. It is sometimes good to try to understand how different your height is from the 'average' height. This is the basis behind the z-score - it is a mathematically way of calculating how different your height would be from the middle of the bell curve which is the average.

The ...

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