In other words, if we cured all diseases and prevented all accidents, people would still die (of old age) in a narrow bell curve distribution centered on 85.

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This non-linear tendency is why complex systems are more likely to follow a power-law probability distribution than the more familiar bell-curve distribution.

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In a bell-curve distribution of probabilities, the range of possible events are clumped together around the average.

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As for talent, it follows a bell-curve distribution, as in every other age, but today it follows stock options, too.

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Noted mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss gave us the normal distribution or bell curve.

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Imagine a society that has a bell-shaped income distribution curve with a broad middle class, a smaller number of rich and poor, and an even smaller number of super rich and super poor.

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It used to be that Wall Street was functioning on the basic idea that financial events were subject to something very like a normal distribution, also known as a bell curve.

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In the 1890s, when he was a doctoral student, Swiss economist Pareto found that the distribution of wealth and income in France deviated from the bell curve in a unique way.

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