Appropriateness of the Normal Distribution

Freakonomics blog on the New York Times has an interesting piece on Olympic sprinters (and Olympians in general). It makes an interesting point:

Usain Bolt’s wonderful run in the Olympic 200-meter sprint reminds us that the normal distribution — the familiar bell curve beloved by economists and statisticians — can be wildly inappropriate when analyzing extremely selected samples.

Really worth a read.

[via NYT Freakonomics]