The Galton Board: Simple Probability Demonstrator provides a visualisation of math in motion and the powers of the probabilities and statistics. The Galton Board displays centuries old mathematical concepts in an innovative, dynamic desktop device that fits in your pocket. It incorporates Sir Francis Galton’s invention from 1873 that illustrated the binomial distribution, which for a large number of rows of hexagons and a large number of beads approximates the normal distribution, a concept known as the Central Limit Theorem. This is shown by the bell curve and standard deviation lines printed on the bottom. When rotated on its axis, more than 4000 steel beads and one large golden bead cascade through 14 rows of symmetrically placed hexagons in the Galton Board. When the device is level, beads bounce off of the 105 hexagons with equal probability of moving to the left or right. As the beads settle into one of the 15 bins at the bottom of the board, they accumulate to create a bell-shaped histogram.

Overlaid on the hexagons is Pascal’s triangle, which is a triangle of numbers that follows the rule of adding the two numbers above to get the number below. The number at each hexagon represents the number of different paths a bead could travel from the top hexagon to that hexagon. Printed on the board is the normal distribution or bell curve, as well as the average and standard deviation lines relative to that distribution, formulas for the normal distribution and binomial expansions. More information about the statistical and mathematical concepts are explained in greater detail in the user guide.