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 



       

Probability Homework #1

I'm back! Tonight I did some of my probability math homework and it wasn't too horrible. The funny thing though is I sat down and was like okay math homework, prepare to be solved! I opened to my first question and got stumped on that one for almost 20 minutes! :( What a great start! I did eventually solve it, so no worries. I did find one question from my homework that very interesting and actually fun to do.

The question said I had a container with seven letters in it. The letters where TRACKED, yes I know they spell tracked. Now my math homework wanted me to find the probability of the outcome being TRACE, in that order, if I drew a letter one by one without replacing it. So, the probability of drawing the first letter in TRACE, if there are seven letters in the container, is 1 out of 7. After drawing the first letter and not replacing it, the probability of drawing the next letter correctly is 1 out of 6. As you continue the probability of drawing the third letter correctly is 1 out of 5, the fourth letter correctly 1 out of 4, and the fifth letter correctly 1 out of 3. After the fifth draw you stop because TRACE only has five letters in it. Each time you draw another letter, the sample space decreases by one. Once you have all of your probabilities, you multiple them together:
                            (1/7)(1/6)(1/5)(1/4)(1/3)
 
All that multiplication comes out to be 1 out of  2520, which is the probability of drawing TRACE. Pretty simple in the end but interesting if you really think it through.

That's all for today. Have a great Thursday everyone (at least it's almost Friday)! :)

Lauren  

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 Probability Day #2!

Today was our second day learning probability and let me tell you that at some points my brain was spinning, hence the title of my blog. We started out with a card activity, pretty tame. We were asked questions like what is the probability of drawing a red card from the deck. We solved this question by first determining how many cards are in a deck: 52. We then asked ourselves how many suits are in a deck: 4 (diamonds, hearts, clubs, and spades) and how many of those suits are red: 2 (diamonds and hearts). So, 26 out of 52 cards are red, or one half. We had other questions like what is the probability of drawing not a queen from the deck. First we had to figure out how many queens are in a deck of cards: 4 (one diamond, one heart, one club, and one spade). Since the question asked what is the probability of not drawing a queen, we subtracted the four queens from the total number of cards which was 52. So, 48 out of 52 or 12 out of 13 (after reduced) were not queens.

The next activity we did in class involved cute little black and white pom poms. Don't let the cute part throw you off, they were vicious! Anyway, with this activity we were given questions that told us we had a box that contained three white pom poms and two black pom poms. A pom pom would be drawn from the box at random and not replaced. Then a second pom pom was to be drawn from the box and not replaced. We needed to draw a tree diagram and find all possible outcomes.  So, with the first draw we could get a white pom pom or a black pom pom. The probability of pulling a white pom pom was 3 out of 5 and the probability of pulling a black pom pom was 2 out of 5 (5 being the total number of pom poms in the box). Next, we had to make a second draw. Now remember we already pulled a pom pom from the box and didn't replace it, so the total number of pom poms will change. So, lets say we pulled a white pom pom from the box on our first draw. When we draw for the second time, we still have the possibility of pulling a white or black pom pom again. The probability of pulling a white pom pom would be 2 out of 4 because there is a total of four pom poms in the box after you drew the first one and didn't replace it. And since we said the first pom pom we drew was white, then there are only two white pom poms left in the box. The probability of pulling a black pom pom would also be 2 out of 4 because there are a total of four pom poms and since we didn't pull a black pom pom on our first draw, the two original black pom poms are still in the box. The same process applies if you were to draw a black pom pom on your first draw instead of a white pom pom. The numbers would be slightly different.       

Click here for an example of a tree diagram of flipping a coin.

So to say the least, it was a big day in math class. Some things I was able to grasp pretty easily, while other things I struggled with and will need more practice on. But hey, that's where math homework comes in handy. I hope your head isn't spinning too bad......until next time! :)

Lauren  

  

Introduction!

This....is my very first blog! 

So, if there are mistakes bare with me. This is my first blog post for my math class (157) and I am excited to see what is in store! :)

Probability Day #1!

On Monday we started our unit of probability. We did an activity that was called Healthy Fish. Everyone in the class paired up with a partner and we were suppose to be given bags of multicolored goldfish, but the bags of goldfish were nowhere to be found. So, we had to pretend. By the way, if your reading my post and your the one who stole the bags of goldfish, we're coming to get you! Anyways, our teacher, Mrs. Klassen, handed out a worksheet that we were to fill out as we did the activity. Each group was given and x amount of healthy fish and an x amount of unhealthy fish for our pretend pond. In my group we had 82 healthy fish and 8 unhealthy fish. Next, Mrs. Klassen let us solve the questions on our worksheet on our own. This was a great way for us to be active while learning. Some of the problems/questions that we had to solve were "compute the probability that a fish in your pond is healthy." "Unhealthy." My group found that the probability of having a healthy fish in our pond was 82:90. 82 being the number of healthy fish that we were given and 90 being the total number of fish in our pond (82+8). We did the same process to compute the probability of the unhealthy fish. healthy unhealthy
  
After the activity we talked about some math vocabulary that we needed to know for the unit. The three vocabulary words that I found most interesting were Equally Likely, Impossible Event and Certain Event. They are all pretty self explanatory and straight forward. Equally likely is when the outcomes or results of an experiment are likely as one another. Impossible event is something that will never happen. An example would be pulling a tiger or giraffe out of the pond. Certain event is something that will happen. An example of that would be that you will always pull a fish out of the pond. 

It was a fun filled day in math class! More blog posts to come, stay tuned! :)

For laughs and giggles: Click here

Lauren