Press [space] to add a dot, or 't' to add ten dots, or 'c' to clear. (You might need to "click" on the applet first.) Do you see any clumping?

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In this applet, each dot is placed uniformly at random in the applet area, independently of all the other dots.

However, if you add LOTS of dots (by holding [space] for a while), then just by chance, various "patterns" will seem to appear. This phenomenon is related to "Poisson clumping", see e.g. Chapter 2 of this book.

[Jeffrey Rosenthal / contact me / Return to my Applets Page]