Dice for Law of Error Purposes

Dice and cards designed by Galton for testing the law of error. The wooden box contains:

50 cards, each bearing two decimal numbers; most frequently a value and the double of the value, but occassionally a value and the double of the value plus 0.1

18 six-sided wooden cubes. 12 of these have paper pasted onto them, and 11 of these have various decimal numbers written onto each face.

A slip of paper enclosed in the box is annotated in Karl Pearson's hand "Cubes of wood as dice (with 24 events) for law of error purposes with notes".

See accompanying notes, GALTON/2/6/4/1.

Mid-Late 19th Century

1 box containing 18 dice and 50 cards

The papers are available at UCL Special Collections and Archives subject to the usual conditions of access to Archives and Manuscripts material, after the completion of a Reader's Undertaking.

A digitised copy is held by the Wellcome Library as part of Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics.

The original material is held at UCL Special Collections. This catalogue is held by the Wellcome Library as part of Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics.