Question

Stats: What are the steps to decide if a normal distribution is appropriate?

Answer 1

Could you please provide more context?

For example, if you're talking about a random sample from a population: we can consider the sample to be approx. normally distributed if n (the sample size) is greater than 30.

If you have and are using a TI-84 calculator, you could enter your data set (sample) and then obtain a "normal probability plot" with the calculator. Let me know if you want more info about this.