The mathematical purpose of this lesson is to apply the concepts of mean and standard deviation to data modeled using a normal distribution, and to use the area under a normal curve to estimate the proportion of data within certain intervals. When students make connections between histograms, normal distributions, the mean, and the standard deviation to estimate population proportions, students are reasoning abstractly and quantitatively (MP2).

One of the activities in this lesson works best when each student has access to a device that can run statistical software such as a spreadsheet included in the Math Tools. This allows students to work with a large data set and visualize the data using representations such as histograms that are time consuming to create by hand.