The Quincunx – A triangular pegboard that will create a nice normal distribution as balls are dropped from the top and bounce down randomly over the triangular array of pegs.

Society’s greatest achievement, The Price Is Right, demonstrates the use of a plinko board in this video with the most excited player ever.

The coding challenge is to design a quincunx that demonstrates each of the following four points… No animation is required, simply (1)show the board as an array of X’s with a (2) user-determined number of rows (1-20) and the (3)resulting bins filling with integers as a (4)user-determined number of balls (1-100,000) is dropped. This time, I’m awarding prizes to the cleanest, most clearly documented entries in each language represented on Codecademy (Ruby, JS, Python).

As always, the prizes are bragging rights, presentation of your code on my blog with full attribution to you and a promo copy of any of my eBooks on iPad for you to share with the youngster in your life (or keep yourself). Each of my books presents educational material  in the form of a story (Heracles and the Gas Laws, Sisyphus and the Laws of Motion, Zombies and Fractions).

Happy Coding!

(submit your entries as links in the comments below)