why are the numbers on situated where they are on a dart board??

Answer 1

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Answer 2

Various designs of dartboard have been used, and regional variations remain in parts of Staffordshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire. In particular, the Yorkshire board differs from the standard board in that it has no treble ring and has a single, inner bull. The dartboard itself may have its origins in the cross section of a tree, although some historical records suggest that the first standard dartboards were the bottoms of wine casks, hence the game's original name of "butts". There is speculation that the game originated among soldiers throwing short arrows at the bottom of the cast or at the bottom of trunks of trees. As the wood dried, cracks would develop, creating "sections". Soon, regional standards emerged and many woodworkers supplemented bar tabs by fabricating dart boards for the local pubs.

The numbering plan known by many today has a 20 on top; however, a great many other configurations have been used throughout the years and in different geographical locations. By most accounts, the numbering layout was devised by Brian Gamlin in 1896 to penalize inaccuracy. Although this applies to most of the board, the left-hand side (near the 14 section) is preferred by beginners, for its concentration of larger numbers. Mathematically, removing the rotational symmetry by placing the "20" at the top, there are 19!, or 121,645,100,408,832,000 possible dartboards. There are many different layouts that would penalize a player more than the current setup; however, the current setup actually does the job rather efficiently

or:

A possible criterion for designing a dartboard is to penalize poor shots as much as possible. That can be done, for example, by maximizing the sum of the absolute value of the difference between adjacent numbers. The larger this sum, the more a poor shot is penalized.
To achieve this maximum, the numbers 11 to 20 should interlace 1 to 10. In this case, the differences between adjacent numbers total 200.

A standard board with 20 sectors has a total of 19! (or 19 x 18 x 17 É x 1 = 121,645,100,408,832,000) possible arrangements. Of those, 10! x 9! (or 1,316,818,944,000) give the maximum possible penalty sum of 200.

Surprisingly, even though there are so many possible arrangements that give the maximum penalty score of 200, the standard dartboard in everyday use has a difficulty of only 198. The "flaw" lies in the placement of 11 next to 14 and 6 next to 10. You could correct this imperfection simply by inserting 14 between 6 and 10 to achieve the maximum difficulty.


Of course, the sum of the differences between adjacent numbers represents just one possible way of defining the difficulty of a dartboard. You might consider, for example, the squares of the differences of adjacent sectors or not only immediate neighbors but also near neighbors.

Moreover, the dartboard also includes areas representing doubles, trebles, and the inner and outer bull. These features, which play an important role in many games, considerably complicate any analysis of the board.

Expert players often concentrate on the treble 20 when aiming for a high score. Players who throw with a much lower accuracy may be wise to aim at sector 14, which has 9 and 11 as adjacent sections. That's the area of the standard dartboard that happens to deviate from the requirements for maximum difficulty, at least according to one criterion.

It would be interesting to delve into the history of dartboards to see how the standard numbering scheme came about.

Copyright © 1997 by Ivars Peterson.

Answer 3

punishment reward theory
look near the higher numbers, the lower numbers are on either side of them.

For beginners I was taught to aim for the 10-15 area of the board. It gives you a bigger area to get decent points or as the old saying going "aim for cork (the bullseye) and take fallout)

Answer 4

is bittersweet as is a low number next to a high number, my advice is to aim for the 19 instead of the twenty as the numbers either side of 19 are slightly higher than those at either side of the 20 - or just throw them and hope for the best!

Answer 5

dart board was called chimole in france early 1600s,chimole was first person to throw arrows at target and have recorded scores,therefore dartes chimore is your answer,look him up,

Answer 6

Its because they want to punish you. Aim for the triple twenty and if you miss to the right (like most righties will) You will get stuck with a lousy one. Thats why

Answer 7

try looking on www.howtodojustabouteverything.com there a section on darts and rules and stuff

Answer 8

Patrick Chaplin is a good resource on this question.

Answer 9

Miss Doop's answer seems to be right.