Question

In a normally distributed quantitative trait, the variance determines:

Select one:

a. number of modes

b. median of the distribution

c. mode of the distribution

d. skew about the mean

e. none of these

Answer 1

e. none of these.

Variance measures how far the trait values are spread out from the mean value.

The mean value is the average value of all the trait values present in the data. Since the question deals with a normally distributed quantitative trait, the mean would be at the center, representing a bell-shaped curve.

The number of trait values that lie right to the mean is almost the same as that of those that lie left to the mean. Therefore, this distribution is symmetrical, i.e, there is no skew for this data.

Median is the middle value of the given data, while the mode is the highest repeating trait value.

Variance depends on the mean.