What is a z Statistic?
The z Distribution is a standardized random sampling distribution of X-values, where X is a random variable drawn from a Normal Distribution. The z statistic reflects the the number of standard deviations or standard errors, X is away from the mean. The generic form of the z statistic calculation is:
Where:
X is the value of interest,
μ is the mean, and
σ is the standard deviation or standard error.
The z Distribution has a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. The equation defining the z distribution curve is:
The z distribution has the following shape.
