This suggests that the familiar bell-shaped curve reflects no immutable law, and that intelligent government policies might well help to reduce pollution levels even while countries are still relatively poor.

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In other words, VAR said how much money a bank could lose in a single day IF mortgage borrowers behaved the way they had in the past and the world stayed within the 95% of the bell-shaped curve it normally occupies.

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Imagine a society that has a bell-shaped income distribution curve with a broad middle class, a smaller number of rich and poor, and an even smaller number of super rich and super poor.

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Poll investors, amateur or professional, about the future and you will likely get a neatly-shaped bell curve of expected outcomes, with most respondents herding toward the perceived safety of the middle ground.

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Since small deviations are common and large ones are rare, the result of plotting data in this way is a curve shaped somewhat like the cross-section of a bell.

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