Modeling the Cereal Box Problem in Class

paper pictureTo do this part of the lesson, you will need: In this activity, you will use a die and a tally sheet to model the cereal box problem. One roll will represent a trip to the supermarket. Each number on the die will represent one of the prizes. You should do at least 30 trials. One trial is complete when you have all six prizes.

Below is a table that illustrates 5 trials. The first trial turned up prize #1 three times, and prize #3 five times. Can you tell which was the last prize for each trial? How?

Now make your own table like this one. Instead of numbers, you will probably have tally marks in your table.

Prize #1Prize #2Prize #3Prize #4Prize #5Prize #6Total Number of Rolls
Trial #131522316
Trial #222222111
Trial #323122212
Trial #414243418
Trial #522133920

An empty table is available for print out.

After you have have completed your table, find the average of all the trials done by your class. (For example, in the table above, the average is 77/5 = 15.4) This is your experimental expected value. Now check and see how close this is to the theoretical value.



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