Metal Model of a Binomial Approximation to a Gaussian Curve by Richard P. Baker, Baker #364

This geometric model was constructed by Richard P. Baker when he was Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Iowa. Baker believed that models were essential for the teaching of many parts of mathematics and physics, and over one hundred of his models are in the museum collections.

The typed part of a paper label on the base of this metal and wooden model reads: No. 364 364 (/) Gaussian curve (/) binomial approximation. . Model 364 appears on page 21 of Baker’s 1931 catalog of models in the section on statistics. Baker named this model after the nineteenth century German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. The surface is related to a statistical function whose graph is commonly referred to as a bell curve. While the bell curve is often referred to as a Gaussian curve, the formal name for a statistical function that produces a bell curve is a normal distribution function.

This model does not show a smooth curve but is intended to show that, as Wheeler put it, “The graph of the binomial coefficients each to a proper scale approximates the normal curve. For details, he referred to a paper by A. A. Bennett in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society for 1918.The Bennett who wrote this paper was probably Albert A. Bennett (1888-1971). The child of American Baptist missionaries in Japan, he attended Brown University and Princeton before entering the U.S. Army. After World War I, he would teach at the University of Texas. Lehigh University, and then Brown.

References:

Richard P. Baker, “Mathematical Models,” Iowa City, Iowa, January, 1931, p. 21.

Albert A. Bennett, “An Elementary Derivation of the Probability Function,” Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 1918, vol. 24, pp. 477-479.

American Men of Science, New York: Science Press, 1933, p. 84.

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