Sweaty Palms!

FIRST MATH TEST WEDNESDAY!

I have my first math test this coming Wednesday so, that means it's study time! I usually get really nervous when it comes to tests, especially math tests. But, I will prepare myself as best I can. I have my Healthy Fish activity to study from as well as my Rock, Paper, Scissors activity. Oh and you can't forget the cute, little, fuzzy, vicious Pom Poms. My math homework questions will also help guide me as I study this weekend. The Monday before the test, some of my classmates will give presentations on different aspects of probability. This will be a great way to have a mini review. I will do my best because as Yoda once said......"There is no try, there is only do!" You can still wish me good luck though! :)

 

Side note: the other day my boyfriend was observing in my mother's second grade classroom and he was teaching the students three digit number place value. He used an interesting trick to help the students read the number. Say the number was 325. When the students would read the number they would say "three hundred, two, five." So to help the students, my boyfriend would cover up the first number or the three in this case, once the student said three hundred. After that, he would ask the students to read the next two numbers or 25 in this example. Finally, he told the students to put the numbers together. I know this doesn't really have to do with probability but I thought it was interesting and it is math related.

Until next time!

Lauren  

    

Probability Homework #2

Round 2 with my probability math homework! Ding Ding! 

If you read my first blog post about my math homework, you know that it did not end well for me. I did eventually finish it but it was a rough start! This time around I was way more successful. The main focus of my math homework this week was odds. What are the odds for this event to happen? What are the odds against this event to happen? One of the questions I was given was, If the probability of selling a car today is 24%, what are the odds against selling a car today? The odds against selling a car today are calculated as P( no sale ) to P( sale ). First, you have to find the probability of selling a car, which is 24 chances out of 100 or 6 out of 25 when reduced. Next, you have to find the probability that the car will not be sold. To calculate this you do one minus 6 out of 25 or 25 out of 25 minus 6 out of 25 which equals 19 out of 25. 

P( no sale )= 1-6/25        or         P( no sale )= 25/25-6/25  

                                 19/25                                            19/25 

So, the probability of selling a car today is 6 out of 25 and the probability of not selling a car today is 19 out of 25. But wait......there's more! Your not quite done with this problem. You still need to find the odds against selling a car today. So, to find that, you divide the probability of not selling a car, P( no sale ), by the probability of selling a car, P( sale ). 

P( no sale ) / P( sale )       

                                                   19/25 / 6/25

Once you simplify that, it comes to 19 out of 6. So, the odds against selling a car today would be 19 to 6. A little side note: my dad did just buy a new car. A Jeep to be specific. And guess whose car has to be put in the driveway now.....mine! :( Sad day! Anyways, that was just one example of the math questions that I had.   

Until next time! :) 

Lauren

                                                                      

Rock, Paper, Scissors

1 2 3 Shoot......I win!
So, today in class we played rock, paper, scissors! Math was involved, so don't worry and it was still fun. We worked in pairs and played 45 games of rock, paper, scissors. I was paired with Amber, enough said. Now, after each game we would record the outcomes and put tally marks in a matrix, like this one:

As you can see I'm pretty good at this game....not really. After calculating the experimental probability of me winning, which was 12 out of 45 ( we calculated that by looking at how many times I won over the total number of games we played) and the probability of Amber winning, which was 16 out of 45 (same process), Amber and I were pretty even throughout the games. Yet we both apparently liked paper! Based on our outcomes, you could say that the game rock, paper, scissors is fair but under the ideal circumstances the theoretical probabilities would all have to be 1 out of 3.  But ours was pretty close to fair.

Under the same idea circumstances you could take this game and analyze it using a tree diagram. The probability of playing/showing a rock, paper or scissor would all be one third. Now lets say you showed a rock for the first game, for the second game you have the same probability of playing/showing a rock, paper or scissor as the first game, one third. If the game rock, paper, scissors was repeated a large number of times, our experimental probabilities would approach a fixed number. This is called Bernoulli's Theorem or Law of Large Numbers.

I never knew the simple game of rock, paper, scissors could help you learn probability in your college level math class, but it can! Also, did you know that there are professional competitions for rock, paper, scissors? Check it out! Until next time, which will probably be tomorrow! :)

Lauren