At a certain excavation site, archaeological studies have used the method of tree-ring dating in an effort to determine when people lived in there. wood from several excavations gave a mean of (year) 619 with a standard deviation of 42 years. the distribution of dates was more or less mound-shaped and symmetrical about the mean. use the empirical rule to estimate a range of years centered about the mean in which about 99.7% of the data (tree-ring dates) will be found.