Final answer:
The statement is false; a normal score is another term for the z-score of a data value, not the expected z-score. Z-scores standardize data points to a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1, and can be interpreted using a z-table to find the cumulative probability.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that a normal score is the expected z-score of a data value, assuming the distribution of the random variable is normal, is false. The correct definition of a normal score is actually another name for the z-score of a data value. It is the standardization of a data point within the context of the data set's mean and standard deviation, converted to a standard normal distribution with a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1.
Z-scores are useful because they allow for comparison across different data sets with differing means and standard deviations by converting the scores to a common scale. A z-score is calculated using the formula (z)(o) = x − μ, implying that for a datum x with a mean µ and standard deviation o, the z-score indicates the number of standard deviations it is from the mean.
To interpret z-scores, one would reference a z-table, which lists the cumulative probability (the area under the standard normal curve) to the left of a z-score. This allows us to find probabilities and make statistical inferences based on the standardized data.