Abstract

Abstract For testing that an underlying population is normally distributed the skewness and kurtosis statistics, √b 1 and b 2, and the D'Agostino–Pearson K 2 statistic that combines these two statistics have been shown to be powerful and informative tests. Their use, however, has not been as prevalent as their usefulness. We review these tests and show how readily available and popular statistical software can be used to implement them. Their relationship to deviations from linearity in normal probability plotting is also presented.