bell curve

[victor steinbok]

>From an opinion piece by James Hansen in WaPo a couple of days ago.

When we plotted the world’s changing temperatures on a bell curve, the
> extremes of unusually cool and, even more, the extremes of unusually hot
> are being altered so they are becoming both more common and more severe.


Note the use of "bell curve" which obviously does not mean the standard
bell curve. The implication is of a statistical distribution chart, no
matter how it is shaped. I've heard "plot it on a bell curve" before, but
don't recall anyone implying so radically un-bell-curve like image,
although, obviously, the usage was more general than the standard normal
distribution.

VS-)

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