55
© 1998 T
EXAS
I
NSTRUMENTS
I
NCORPORATED
Activity 10
Give Me 5!
Probability
♦
order of operations
♦
mental math
♦
basic computation
Students investigate the results of tossing 5 coins.
They compare what happens to what is expected to
happen.
Materials
♦
student activity sheets (provided)
♦
TI-73
³
Setup
♦ If your TI-73s have not been used for any random
numbers prior to this activity, you and your students
need to store an integer “seed value” to
rand
in each
TI-73.
With each
rand
execution, the TI-73 generates the
same random-number sequence for a given seed value.
The TI-73 factory-set seed value for
rand
is
0
. To
generate a different random-number sequence, store
any non-zero seed value to
rand
.
➪
If you do not enter a seed
value,
rand
uses whatever
value happens to be the
current seed. If there is no
seed, it uses the factory-
set value of
0
.
1. Enter the number you want for your seed value.
Have students use different seed values. (In the
example at the right,
1
is used.)
2. Now press X 1 " "
1
b
1 " "
1
b b.
(For more information about seed values, refer to the
“1 Probability Menu” section in the Math chapter
of the TI-73 Guidebook .)
♦ Discuss with students events that are equally likely to
occur, such as tossing a coin and getting a head or a
tail.
➪
If you want to restore the
factory-set seed value,
store
0
to
rand
or reset
the defaults.