MATHEMATICS FOR LIBERAL ARTS
MATH 101
Southwestern   
Adventist University 
 
   Distance Education Lawrence E. Turner, Jr., Ph.D.  


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PROJECTS


project 3      statistics

This is an experimental study. Take four identical coins and toss them 100 times. Count the number of possible outcomes (HHHH, HHHT, HHTT, HTTT, and TTTT). Generate a bar chart of the number of each possible outcome. Compare these to the expected results from tossing four fair coins. Write a report summarizing your findings.

To categorize the outcomes use the numbers of heads that you obtain for each trial. You should get 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 heads. Therefore, tally the number you get. It may be useful to construct a table:

head count number obtained expected number
 
0    
1    
2    
3    
4    

For the expected, you need to write out the entire sample space of how the coins might come out: HHHH, HHHT, HHTH, ... , TTTT. (Hint, there are 16 possible configurations.) Count the number that produce 0 heads, the number that produce 1 head, etc. Note: this is similar to counting the number of boys and girls in a family of four children! Finally, to compute the expected number you multiply the total number of trials (the number of times you throw the four coins) by the fraction of possible outcomes that produce, say, 0 heads, etc.

The bar chart should plot on the horizontal axis the number of heads: 0, 1, 2, ... , 4. The height of each bar then corresponds to the number of times that count of heads were obtained.		  
© 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 by Lawrence Turner