Adolphe Quetelet made which of the following observations about data that permeates the social sciences, even today?
A) many traits can be measured in a way to make the mean meaningful
B) the mean is a very important number for a dataset because it is influenced by every datapoint
C) many traits and characteristics that we measure tend to fall on a normal distribution
D) Many traits and characteristics that we measure tend to have a fairly uniform distribution.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Adolphe Quetelet observed that many traits and characteristics that we measure tend to fall on a normal distribution, which is still a widely observed phenomenon in the social sciences today. Option A is true, but is not specifically an observation made by Quetelet. Option B is not entirely accurate, as the mean is influenced more by extreme outliers or skewness in a dataset. Option D is also not true, as most traits and characteristics are not uniformly distributed.

Adolphe Quetelet Made Which of the Following Observations About Data