Probability Assessment

I gave each student a spinner like the one shown above.  I also gave each student an experiment to perform:

The students were to (1) define probability, (2) recreate the spinner on the paper by dividing the circle into 8ths and labeling each piece with its color, and (3) finding the probability of spinning each color.

Now, the students were to make reasonable predictions based upon the data.  By writing each color and its fractional probability, the students should be able to predict the number of spins each color should have in 40 spins.

Now it was time to experiment!  Each student had a spinner, each student spun 40 times and kept a tally of their data.  After they performed the experiment, they recorded their tallies in the form of fractions, compared their experimental fractions to their predictions, and wrote about their observations.

Tomorrow, I will place all of the data on a spreadsheet to show how the theoretical probability and the experimental probability compare.  This will be fun, because we will be able to use a circle graph.  This will allow us to visually see how close our data truly is!

HOMEWORK:  Countdown 4.2