Question

“If you had a large collection of data, how might you go about determining whether the distribution was normal?”

Answer 1

Plotting a histogram would be helpful at first sight , because if the plot seems to be skewed or multi-modal or some other shaped distribution , then we can easily suspect that given data is not coming from a normal population ,if the plot seems to be symmetric about median and bell shaped curve , then we can use further Q-Q plot to satisfactorily say whether the given data comes from a normal distribution or not, although this method is more technical , but is more appropriate than others .

If the data lies on the line in Q-Q plot , then the data comes from a normal distribution , else it is not.