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I don't have the proper vocabulary, so I'll just try to present two situations that I think capture my question: if you were to chart "vertical leaping ability among high school students," I would think you'd get a distribution where there'd be a lot of variance in the below-median ability but less variance at the high-end because advantages between elite and quite-fit athletes are only a matter of a few inches. Another example might be "speeds of everyone riding a bike right now" where the above-median side is limited by wind resistance.

Is this sort of situation described by its own probability distribution function or does one have to preprocess the data so that the varying / resistance aspect is removed? (That is, transform "vertical leap" or "bike speed" into calories or somesuch; but what if the underlying driver(s) are unknown?)

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