What is Normal?

 I was cleaning out my email inbox and saw a headline go by... "What is Normal?" and it got me thinking. What... exactly... is... normal? And more importantly, who decides "what is normal"?

What immediately popped into my mind was.. the infamous Bell Curve... which is a "graph depicting the normal distribution". Most of the thingies are in the middle, with the mean, mode and median in there... along with the "standard deviation" (that's the bottom). So in this graph 68.2% of the thingies are within 1 standard deviation... and 95.4% are within 2 standard deviations.

I know... I know... are your eyes crossed yet? Yep... mine too. I vaguely remember some of this from high school math class. But the point is... this seems to be the root case of "normal".

If you have a car in North America, you are probably "normal"... in that, you fall within that middle dark blue bit.  See... it's a bit skewed but you can see the bell curve hump that most households in the USA fall within that 1 to 2 car range.

So if you are one of the outliers... either no car or more than 4 or 5 cars... you are not "normal".

But it's generally a numbers game... you need a scale along the bottom. So you could ask... how many body piercings do women have? And you'd get numbers along the bottom from 0 to 10+... same as with the cars. And in the piercings bell curve, you would find out where "normal" is... maybe 2 or 3 piercings.

But if you just ask, how many women have piercings, you'll get one number... 70% of women have piercings. So in this case... the majority of women have piercings... so they are "normal"...

Do you see where that goes? It becomes a "who has the most votes" game. Most women have long hair. Most men have short hair. You could probably even get a bell curve for hair length... with very few women having super-short hair... or super long hair. And the middle of the pack is "normal".

But while "normal" might have some usefulness in the world of geometry, where we also talk about means and medians and modes and standard deviations... it has also become a kicker of a word out in the real world.

Because if you are not "normal"... then you are "weird". And not in a good way. You are an outlier, a rogue, someone out on the fringes of "normality".

But what if we considered the entire bell curve is "normal". There will always be outliers and that is part of "normal" distribution. It's part of nature. If you had a bell curve where everything was just in one category... it would no longer be a bell curve. Everyone would be the same. And that would not be a "normal distribution".

Let's look at... oh, let's say deer antlers... see... bell curve.

That is a "normal distribution". Some deer have higher antler scores (inches), some have lower scores... but most of them are in the middle. And that's normal. But it doesn't mean that the ones with scores between 110-150 are "normal" deer. Does it? Or average? Or above average?

Geez... we really do like to measure things but maybe we take it too far. We take statistical probability language and turn around and apply it to living, breathing human beings.

• If you don't look like "most" women... then you are not normal.
• If you don't eat meat, like "most" people... then you are not normal.
• If you are not hetero, like "most" people... then you are not normal.
• If you weigh more than "most" people... then you are not normal.

Yeah. Normal is over-rated and misapplied. We take a statistical term and slap it on people who do not fit into our narrow (68.2%) worldview.

It's probably time to retire the word "normal"... unless you are a statistician and actually know how to use it properly. Most of us don't have a license to know how to use the word properly!