What is the probability of flipping a coin and it landing on heads? 1/2
What is the probability of flipping a coin and it landing on tails? 1/2 also.
Well Bernoulli's Law of Large Numbers says that the more you perform an experiment many many times, the closer the experimental probability result will come to match the theoretical probability.
Our professor taught us how to simulate a coin toss on our TI-83 calculators so we could simulate the event happening opposed to having 25 people flipping a coin 40 times each. Here are some tutorials on how to perform that function on your calculator with a TI-83 or a TI-84.
For my 50 trials, I came up with 24/50 or 49% heads and 26/50 or 51% percent tails which is very close to the theoretical probability 25/50 or 1/2 or 50%.
Together as a class we added all of our totals together with a grand total of 700. According to Bernoulli's Law, it should approach much closer to the theoretical probability of 1/2 or 50% for both heads and tails.
BUT I got pretty close the first time, being one percent off on both heads and tails. As a class we got 327 heads (47%) and 373 tails and (53%). Still very close to being half and half.
Simple, but a great easy way to look at theoretical and experimental probability!
Cortni,
ReplyDeleteYour experimental probability was super close to the theoretical probability! That is very cool. When I was doing this activity, I found it really useful to use the simulation on the calculator. It made it so much easier to press a button rather than to flip a coin. It would also make it easier in the classroom, and much less noisy!
-Leah