Galton Board (Plinko) in Slow Motion — How the Bell Curve Emerges
Drop a ball through a field of pegs. It bounces left or right randomly at each peg. Repeat a thousand times: the balls pile up in a bell curve.
This is a Galton board (also called a quincunx or Plinko board) — a beautiful demonstration of the Central Limit Theorem. Each ball's path is random, but the distribution of where they land is the Gaussian (normal) distribution, predictably and inevitably.
The deeper connection: any sum of many small independent random effects produces a Gaussian distribution. This is why heights, measurement errors, IQ scores, and countless other natural phenomena all follow bell curves — they're sums of many small contributions.
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— Dr. Shane Ross, Professor of Aerospace Engineering, Virginia Tech
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