The Normal Distribution

Remember in high school when you learned about the bell curve? Some teachers used it as a grading tool and other just taught you about it in reference to height. The basics of the bell curve are that approximately 68% of the population fall within one standard deviation of the norm of any given characteristic. Approximately 95% fall within two standard deviations of the norm and approximately 99% fall within three standard deviations of the norm. So, if the norm for an IQ is 100 and the standard deviation is 10 then the range of one standard deviation would be from 90-110, two standard deviations would be from 80-120, and three standard deviations would be from 70-130. So 99% of people have an IQ between 70 and 130.

Boring! Until you learn that the bell curve applies to many things other than height and weight.... like... keys! In any organization everyone will have a key or keys (to the building, to your office, to the bathroom). The distribution of keys is proportionate to the amount of influence/ power you have. So let's make the Y-axis the number of keys a certain person has and the X-axis the amount of influence a person has. The range of Y will be 1-100 and the range of X will be 0-100. The mean is 50 and the standard deviation is 15.

A person with an influence equal to zero will have one key. On the other end, a person with an influence of 100 will also have one key. However, the majority of folks in the middle will have several, even many keys. Think of it in terms of a school. The principle is going to have one key, the master key. That key will open everything. The one denotes their level of importance. However, a first year teacher will also have one key, the key to their classroom, a symbol of their unimportance. In the middle you have the teachers with tenure, who will have dozens of keys. They've moved classrooms, maybe moved buildings, changed positions, and they still have all their old keys. They have a middle amount of importance. If at any point they are promoted to principle they will need only one key. If these tenure teachers decide to quit and move to a new school district they will be given one key, as a symbol of their level.
This is only one example of how the normal distribution occurs in real life. If you look for it, you can find it. Feel free to leave comments on your experiences with the normal distribution in your life.