Mitosis, Meiosis, And Patterns Of Inheritance Worksheet (Page 5 of 27) in pdf

Mitosis, Meiosis, And Patterns Of Inheritance Worksheet Page 5

THE LAWS OF PROBABILITY

PURPOSE:

Determine the operations involved in the laws of probability.

The basic question of probability is: How often should we expect a particular event in a given number of

events? The simplest way to express probability is with fractions. When a coin is tossed, there are the

possibilities that it may come up heads or tails. Suppose you want to know the probability that heads will

appear. You are looking for one speciﬁc event (heads) from the two possibilities (heads or tails). The number

of speciﬁc events, 1, is the numerator of the fraction. The number of possibilities, 2, is the denominator of the

fraction. Thus, the probability of a coin landing heads up is 1/2. We can also write this as 0.5, or 50%, but the

common fraction is the starting point.

Part 1 - Hypothesis

A. If you ﬂip one coin 10 times, then you expect the coin to land on heads ______ times and on tails _____

times.

B. If you ﬂip one coin 100 times, then you expect the coin to land on heads _______ times and on tails

_________ times.

Part 1 - Procedure

1. With your partner, each h of you should have the same value coin. One partner should perform trials 1-5,

the other partner should perform trials 6-10.Record whether the coin landed heads or tails.

2. Perform the procedure a total of 10 times. Record the total number of heads and tails in Table 1, in the line

marked “Trial 1”.

3. Continue alternative roles and recording results until the coin has been tossed a total of 100 times. (ten

trials total)

Trial

No. Heads No. Tails

Totals

Mitosis, Meiosis, And Patterns Of Inheritance Worksheet Page 5