The man credited with the ‘invention’ of the numbering sequence of the modern standard dartboard is Brian Gamlin. Gamlin was a carpenter and showman from the County of Lancashire, England and came up with the sequence at the age of 44.
He introduced the numbering variation at a county fair in 1896. Though darts were already a popular fairground activity, Gamlin built the board for a new game he called ‘round the clock’ in which players have to score with darts in numerical order.
Gamlin designed the numbering in such a way as to cut down the incidence of ‘lucky shots’ and reduce the element of chance. The numbers are placed in such a way as to encourage accuracy - the placing of small numbers on either side of large numbers.
There are 2,432,902,008,176,640,000 different possible arrangements of the 20 segments on a standard dartboard, so it's impressive that Gamlin’s arrangement of the numbers is almost perfect.
From a mathematical perspective, total of the difference between adjacent numbers on Gamlin's board is 196, only 4 away from the maximum possible total of 200.
The best way to improve the board would be by moving the 14 and placing it between the 6 and the 10.