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This means that the sum of two independent normally distributed random variables is normal, with its mean being the sum of the two means, and its variance being the sum of the two variances (i.e., the square of the standard deviation is the sum of the squares of the standard deviations). [1]
The probability distribution of the sum of two or more independent random variables is the convolution of their individual distributions. The term is motivated by the fact that the probability mass function or probability density function of a sum of independent random variables is the convolution of their corresponding probability mass functions or probability density functions respectively.
A random variable with a Gaussian distribution is said to be normally distributed, and is called a normal deviate. Normal distributions are important in statistics and are often used in the natural and social sciences to represent real-valued random variables whose distributions are not known.
The distribution of the sum (or average) of the rolled numbers will be well approximated by a normal distribution. Since real-world quantities are often the balanced sum of many unobserved random events, the central limit theorem also provides a partial explanation for the prevalence of the normal probability distribution.
In its simplest form, it relates the expectation of a sum of randomly many finite-mean, independent and identically distributed random variables to the expected number of terms in the sum and the random variables' common expectation under the condition that the number of terms in the sum is independent of the summands.
Similarly for normal random variables, it is also possible to approximate the variance of the non-linear function as a Taylor series expansion as: V a r [ f ( X ) ] ≈ ∑ n = 1 n m a x ( σ n n ! ( d n f d X n ) X = μ ) 2 V a r [ Z n ] + ∑ n = 1 n m a x ∑ m ≠ n σ n + m n ! m !
If the original density is a piecewise polynomial, as it is in the example, then so are the sum densities, of increasingly higher degree. Although the original density is far from normal, the density of the sum of just a few variables with that density is much smoother and has some of the qualitative features of the normal density.
Let a random variable ξ be normally distributed and admit a decomposition as a sum ξ=ξ 1 +ξ 2 of two independent random variables. Then the summands ξ 1 and ξ 2 are normally distributed as well. A proof of Cramér's decomposition theorem uses the theory of entire functions.