Activity Overview
How many tiles would you have to pick to be confident that your estimated probability truly represents the situation?
In this activity, you will draw a tile from a bag, record its color and put it back in the bag. The bag contains 24 tiles some blue and some green. A green tile is considered a success and a blue tile is considered a failure.
By performing many trials, you will determine the number of tiles of each color in the bag.
Before the Activity
Do not distribute the handout first -- do the lab with a class set of data.
Have the students enter the data into list L1 as the experiment is being performed. Introduce the new calculator command(s). Discuss the window. Discuss the class results. Count the actual "successes" and compare the class prediction.
Distribute the handouts and samples to your groups.
I use groups of three.
During the Activity
Each of the students need to be able to establish the results of the experiment on his/her calculator. The group should decide which of their graphs best respresents the desired results.
The teacher selects the "best" screen captures and also collects the data stored in lists L1, L2, and L3.
After the Activity
During the activity wrap-up, it is essential that the results of the lab are demonstrated by each group. Since the screen captures will reflect different results and different sampling, each group should be given the opportunity to describe and discuss their findings.
A document is created and printed during the class period summarizing the results of the groups. Included is data from this year.