Tossing Dice
Activity Overview
This lesson involves simulating tossing two fair dice, recording the sum of the faces, and creating a dotplot of the sums.
As a result, students will:
- Observe how the simulated sampling distribution for the sums of the faces changes as the number of samples is increased.
- Compare their distribution of the sums of the faces of two randomly-tossed dice to their classmates' distributions, and observe how the distributions are alike and how they differ.
- Answer probability questions based on a dotplot of the sums of the faces of two randomly-tossed fair dice.
- Compare the distribution of the sums of the faces from two randomly-tossed fair dice to the theoretical distribution for the sums of the faces.
Objectives
- Students will estimate the probability of outcomes from a dotplot.
- Students will compare a simulated sampling distribution to the theoretical distribution for the underlying relationship and note that the simulated distribution will more closely approximate the theoretical after a large number of samples.
Vocabulary
- dice
- dotplot
- faces of a die
- probability of an outcome
- simulated sampling distribution
- theoretical distribution