The normal distribution is a bell-shaped curve that is symmetric around the mean. It is used to describe variables that tend to cluster around the average and is characterized by the mean and standard deviation. The empirical rule states that approximately 68% of values lie within 1 standard deviation of the mean, 95% within 2 standard deviations, and 99% within 3 standard deviations. Standard scores transform data into a standard normal distribution with mean 0 and standard deviation 1 to allow probabilities to be determined from normal distribution tables.