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Old 07-24-2010, 02:50 PM   #27
jeff_wilson
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Default Re: Standard deviation on Stat distribution?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Langy View Post
That can't possibly be right. Look at the effects of what stat-16 or higher gives you. ...
Besides, saying 'most people have between 7-13' just means the standard deviation is probably something less than three. Three is approximately the maximum, not the actual value. The standard deviation could be 1, leaving 9-11 as 65%-ish, 8-12 95%, 7-13 99.5%, etc., and those are still 'the majority', because 99.5% is still greater than 50%.
If you care to follow the links back to the original discussion, you can see the conditionals and caveats with which I addressed the issues you bring up here, but did not include in my subsequent references for the sake of brevity, like "standard dev no more than 3" which includes your case above.

2.5% of attested GURPS humans having a given stat of 17 or more might be too many, but in my experience it isn't ludicrously too many.
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