The Bell-Shaped Curve

I was sitting in my research perspectives class maybe a month ago and my professor was talking about the bell-shaped curve in statistics. He said something profound about it that I have been thinking about lately and may answer some questions that I have always wondered. "The bell-shaped curve is a pretty good way of looking at life." -Dr. Allen Jackson. If you look at a bell-shaped curve with normal distribution, you'll notice that most of the space occupied in the bell-shaped curve resides in the middle. When applied to humanity, what the bell-shaped curve says is that on any given topic, most people will fall somewhere in the middle. Let's take intelligence, for example. What the bell-shaped curve says is that if you take any ten people that provide a decent representation of the population two will be highly intelligent, six will have average intelligence, and two will have low intelligence. You can apply this to just about anything - athleticism, musical ability, height, etc. What this means is that on any given subject most people are average. This is not meant to be insulting because most people will be on the high end of some subject, albeit quite obscure in many cases.

I have often wondered why in the field of entertainment there are some things that appeal to me so much, that are of such high quality and depth and complexity, yet they never reach the masses. I read recently that arguably the most influential and popular jazz record of all time, Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, has sold more than two million copies worldwide. I think that Kind of Blue is masterpiece, and yet it has sold a mere two million copies compared to Bat out of Hell by Meatloaf which has sold over 43 million and Millennium by Backstreet Boys which has sold over 40 million. How this applies the bell-shaped curve philosophy is that if most people are average then for something to appeal to most people it must be average. It is the same thing with classical music like the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 which I was in utter awe of after I heard it. There are very few people in the world, however, that would name that piece of music as one of the best they've ever heard. I can see this being applicable in the movie industry as well. Movies like Transformers, which to me was absolute garbage, continue to be smash hits at the box office. My favorite movie might be What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, no mass appeal there. Shows like Friends, whose series finale had 52.5 million viewers, have massive audience appeal yet are pretty average to me. There are exceptions of course, but the fact that there are exceptions concurs with the philosophy of the bell-shaped curve. Exceptions prove the rule, as they say.

I enjoy Michael Jackson's music, the TV show Seinfeld, and watching the Super Bowl just like multitudes of other people, but the bell-shaped curve makes me feel better about some of the things I like that others don't as well as the things that many others like that I don't. Does that make me elite? Of course not. Does that make me condescending? Absolutely not. Does that make me average? I hope not.

Josh Tittle

I am going to get a little solemn for just a moment. Earlier this week a young man named Josh Tittle died of sarcoma cancer. He was 22 years old. He grew up in the same town that I did but we went to different schools so I didn't know him very well. His sister, whom I didn't know very well either, went to the same undergraduate school as me and we graduated at the same time.

I met Josh when we were around 10 or 11 years old at a vacation bible school that I went to with a friend. I remember that he worked at CiCi's Pizza when we were in high school and I saw him there occasionally. Despite not knowing him very well I can't help but be deeply saddened by his passing. Typically when you hear of someone dying of cancer, he or she is middle aged or older. Although it is terrible every time, normally a cancer victim has at least lived a sufficient amount of time, most often outliving his or her parents. Josh did not outlive his parents. I can't even begin to imagine the grief they must be experiencing. Josh was my age.

While my toughest decisions on a normal day are which class to study for, what to do with my free time, or whether to eat in or out, Josh was deciding where he wanted his funeral service to be, who he wanted his pallbearers to be, and what to do with all his possessions. From the time he first went to the doctor because of some pain in his side to the time of his passing was less than 7 months. About 2 months ago the doctors told him there were no more treatments left that could help him and they gave Josh a timetable for the rest of his life of about 3 months. It is unfathomable to me what must have been going through his mind as he knew the inevitable.

I think that were I in this situation the only things that would keep me going would be family, friends, and knowing that I would spend eternity with God in paradise. Josh was a believer so I bet this kept him going as well. In times where there is little of it, that is the beauty of being saved by Christ and believing in his eternity. My prayers go out to Josh Tittle's family and friends. If his passing has affected me this much I know those closer to him are feeling it tenfold or more. If you want to know more about the entire situation here is a link to a blog that his parents wrote throughout: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/joshtittle/journal