Normal Distribution |
| Many aspects of the natural world result in variation around a central mean. For example, the time it takes you to brush your teeth in the morning. This simulation illustrates how differences like different tooth brushing times can result from a simple mechanism of dropping balls. Balls are dropped from the same point at the top. When a ball hits a pin, it can either go left or right as it drops. As more balls drop they tend to spread out. Because very few balls tend to "always drop to the left" or "always drop to the right," most balls cluster around the middle, giving the distribution its characteristic bell-shaped curve. |