Question

Answer the following questions thoroughly. Use correct grammar and punctuation.

1) A student observes the following spinner and claims that the color red has the highest probability of appearing, since there are two red areas on the spinner. What is your reply? Your answers should include facts, rules, any definitions necessary to explain why the student is correct or incorrect.

2) In class, an experiment of flipping a coin is performed.

Pretend that you are introducing the concept of probability and introducing the terms 1) experiment, 2) outcomes, 3)sample space, 4) theoretical probability, and 5) empirical probability. Explain these terms, as if you were speaking to a 5th grade class, as if they knew nothing about probability. You will need to tell the class what each term , 1-5, is represented by in this particular example. Use correct grammar and punctuation.

Answer 1

1) If red color has the highest probability of apprearing, it means that the contribution of red color in the total probability of the spinner is highest. As there are two red areas on the spinner, it signifies that there are two sections of red color in the total probability.

2) When an experiment of flipping a coin is performed the sample space of getting a head or tail is given as,

let it be denoted by S = { H, T }, since only one coin is tossed, we can have only two outcomes, either it will be a head or it will be a tail. The probability of getting any of these is 0.5 ( 1/2), for both the cases. As the probability is given by the formula, Number of outcomes / total number of outcomes, and here by seeing at sample space, if we are calculating probability for getting a head, it is given as Number of outcomes = 1, total number of outcomes = 2 ( since there are two elements in sample space), So probability of getting a head is 1/2 = 0.5