bell curve

[Jonathan Lighter]

Yeah, what's wrong with "plotted it on a curve"?

Kids today!

JL



On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 5:19 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      bell curve
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From an opinion piece by James Hansen in WaPo a couple of days ago.
>
> When we plotted the world=92s 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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