I was in my high school statistics class. My eyes glazed over. The teacher talked about normal distributions and standard deviations. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon an illustrated book in the library that I saw these concepts in a new light. The book used graphics to show probability distributions. They changed them from equations to something I could see and almost feel. That was my ‘aha’ moment. Abstract numbers turned into something tangible and lovely.
Let’s start with the basics. A probability distribution is a math function. It gives the probabilities of possible outcomes in an experiment. But let’s ditch the jargon and instead create a series of paintings. Each painting shows a type of distribution. The patterns and colors show the likelihood of different outcomes.