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Probability: Biased Coins

This excel program illustrates the effect of introducing bias when throwing coins.

The first interactive excel sheet simulates the outcome of throwing a coin ten times. The probability of each outcome is plotted and shown in a table, alongside the cumulative probability. The probability of obtaining a head can be altered, and the effect this has on the probability distribution can be seen.

The second sheet repeats this process, this time for twenty throws of the coin. Again the probability of obtaining heads can be adjusted.

The file also includes three worksheets to be printed off and completed by students. Topics include: Probability of biased events and relative frequency. No solutions are included.

Note
This program was designed by be viewed on a screen with a resolution of 1024 x 768. Users may have to adjust the resolution of their screen for the pages to display as was originally intended. The program uses macros which need to be enabled on users’ machine.

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