SimuLab 3: Wholesale Coin Flipping
Random Walk is a program that uses a computer to do our ten-penny flip thousands of times faster than we can. The computer is programmed so that "heads'' and "tails'' are equally likely to occur. The computer also plots the results. Please see Java Applet Page.
2. Click on the Flip button to flip one coin at a time.
Click Flip again. And again. Repeat until you have flipped
ten coins. Study the numbers at the bottom and the top of the
graph: What is being recorded?
3. Now repeat the process, but this time click Go to have
the computer flip coins automatically, one after the other. Notice
that as the bar graph (histogram) grows, the vertical scale changes
to keep the plot on the screen. The computer will run 100 trials
of ten coins each. Record results in your notebook.
4. Now choose a new window (choose Coin Flip in the
New box on the control panel).
5. Click Go and watch the graph grow. To speed up the process,
choose Less Graphics from the Options menu.
6. Choose the Tile Windows command under the Options
menu and compare the two graphs. (Tile Windows shrinks
the windows and places them side by side, so you can view more
than one at a time.) Are the two patterns the same? Can you predict
the shape of the next graph if you make a third run? Try it! Tile
the resulting three displays.
7. Click on Coin Flip one more time, select 500 for the
Number of Trials under the Experiment menu, and
choose Less Graphics under the Options menu. Press
Go.
8. Select the Tile Windows command under Options
to see all of these results side by side on the screen.
9. Experiment on your own. Change the number of trials. You can
also change the number of flips per trial with the Number of
Steps command under the Experiment menu. You should
now be able to verify the prediction you made at the end of HandsOn
10. Again, make a prediction about what the graph will look like.
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