In
statistics and applications of statistics,
normalization can have a range of meanings. In the simplest cases,
normalization of ratings means adjusting values measured on different scales to a notionally common scale, often prior to averaging. In more complicated cases, normalization may refer to more sophisticated adjustments where the intention is to bring the entire
probability distributions of adjusted values into alignment. In the case of
normalization of scores in educational assessment, there may be an intention to align distributions to a
normal distribution. A different approach to normalization of probability distributions is
quantile normalization, where the
quantiles of the different measures are brought into alignment.