What’s Normal? What’s Normal? The 98.6 degree standard for human body temperature was derived by a German doctor in 1868. In an attempt to verify his claim, Mackowiak, Wasserman, and Levine21 took temperatures from 148 healthy people over a three-day period. A data set closely matching the one in Mackowiak’s article was derived by Allen Shoemaker, and appears in the Journal of Statistics Education.22 The body temperatures for these 130 individuals are shown in the relative frequency histogram that follows.
a. Describe the shape of the distribution of temperatures.
b. Are there any unusual observations? Can you think of any explanation for these?
c. Locate the 98.6-degree standard on the horizontal axis of the graph. Does it appear to be near the center of the distribution?
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