How can I distinguish between an semi exponential and Gaussian distribution.

I have multiple distributions which I assume are all semi exponential and use a log model to acheive lienarity for regresssion analysis.But my assumption is wrong and some of the input distributions are gaussian.I need to first find out if a distrubtions is gaussian or exponential before using a specific transformation to acheive linearity.How can I do this ?

Answer 1

[Jeff Miller]

You could check the skewness, since exponentials are quite skewed and normals are not.