Please help I'm literally so yeet lol. What is the difference between "y=f(x)" and a number such as "f(a)"?

Monitors manufactured by tsi electronics have life spans that have a normal distribution with a standard deviation of 1800 hours and a mean life span of 20,000 hours. if a monitor is selected at random, find the probability that the life span of the monitor will be more than 17,659 hours. round your answer to four decimal places.

597008.439431 to the nearest thousand

The distribution of a sample of the outside diameters of pvc pipes approximates a symmetrical, bell-shaped distribution. the arithmetic mean is 14.0 inches, and the standard deviation is 0.1 inches. about 68% of the outside diameters lie between what two amounts?