For those of you who are not familiar with this term, one of the meanings of quincunx is a mechanical device which illustrates random variation, and in particular the binomial approximation to the normal distribution. A gentleman called Malcolm Hartley has been in touch with the School to donate a particularly fine example which he used during his career to teach quality control, at Shell and in other places. The device is currently sitting on Adrian's desk where it is used for moments of quiet therapy at times of stress. If anyone would like to visit and experiment with it, please just knock on Adrian's door. We will find some suitable location for it within the School in due course.

First published: 19 December 2017

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