Skip to main content

Experimental and Theoretical probabilities


[NOTE: Skim this whole post before doing the work; I promise it's a good idea.]

How can you get a feel for probability? It's all well and good to say the probability of getting heads is 1/2, but we know that if you flip a coin 2 times, you aren't guaranteed to get one heads and one tails. We could flip a coin 10 times and get all 10 heads. It feels less likely that if we flip a coin 100 times, all 100 will be heads... but at this point our intuition starts to fade. So we simulate!

Plan

  • Open Google Drive and start a new spreadsheet
  • Use the function RANDBETWEEN(smallNumber, bigNumber) to make a random number that is either 0 or 1: 0 for tails, 1 for heads.
  • Use the function IF(test, valueIfTrue, valueIfFalse) to make a column that says "Heads" or "Tails" depending on the first column.
  • Use conditional formatting to highlight heads.
  • Look for streaks. 
Next
  • As of 2014, in America, the odds of dying are 864 in 100,000. That is, in an oversimplified model, if you grouped people into groups of 100,000, and gave them each a number between 1 and 100,000, the people who got 864 or lower would be dead. 
  • Use RANDBETWEEN() and IF() to simulate 1,000 people's year. How many die?
As you do these things, fill in this form



Need help? I made these; they might be useful. Sorry I sound tired... It's because I am.

Coin flipping simulations:

Odds of dying simulations: 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Marvin Minsky, AI, Math Education

The audio is too good to make this a gif. So, to be clear, this is the blog post for THURSDAY, 1/28. If you are looking for Tuesday's post, go back a post. I wanted to mention to you all that a mathematician and artificial intelligence researched named Marvin Minsky died on Sunday. Among lots of amazing things he did in his life, he wrote about math education for the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project. Here is that article ; I'd like you to read it for homework. Speaking of death, check out this amazing visualization ! Finally, for classwork, I would like you to go back to Tuesday's blog post, and comment on other people's homework. Specifically do you like the charts they chose? Are they interesting? Any feedback? Homework IMPORTANT: Pick which 5 (or more) variables that you will track for the Feltron project. Think about how you will keep track of them - pen and and notebook? The Reporter App? A pedometer? Also, that Marvin Minsky article is really...

Bio Homework 3/15

Read this follow up to the movie we watched in class: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/how-can-you-help-the-bees/36/ and write a 1 paragraph response to the movie and the reading. And remember... study study study! There's a quiz on Wednesday.

ISRP March 17th, Transformation

Theme: Transformation First, I returned work. Checked in with people who have missing assignments. I should probably grade late ones, but haven’t. Second, share any good ads. Collect homework; if you don’t have it go to Liz. To wrap up with morals, mention that some of them, from the homework, seem amoral. To make it clear that morals are about right and wrong, ask questions like: Do animals have rights? Do all humans have rights? Is euthanasia acceptable? Is lying ever acceptable? If someone else can obviously make more out of their life than I, is it moral to sacrifice myself for them if needed? Then we introduced the idea of transformation with these stories: Samsa and Seuss from This American Life: (14 min) Goo and You - Radiolab - What happens to butterflies? (17 min) Homework: Write a short, short story involving transformation. Ideally, it would have a theme, or moral. Actually, ideally it would be really good and fu...