Probability Experiments

In my honors precalculus classes, We performed two experiments.

The first is from Math MashUp.

I believe the second came from a conference I attended long ago. I had to dust off an old Word file to remember what the targets should look like and had to re-create the targets since I couldn’t find the originals in my basement storage room.

I polled my students asking them to predict which target would have the greatest probability for a coin landing on white. Some quietly wondered if this was a trick.

Here were my students’ predictions.

We tossed coins to get experimental data.

When I created the spreadsheet for recording the data I was intrigued by the ability to embed the Excel sheet in a website. Here’s the spreadsheet my students will use to record their experimental data. Unfortunately, while they could log in on their phones, they didn’t have the ability to edit so we added the data via the SmartBoard.

For homework, I asked them to calculate the percentage of white vs the whole sheet for each target. Discussions about experimental vs theoretical probability will ensue.