spinners again to pull socks from the drawer. The principle of dependent events was clear: The color of the first sock drawn affected the possible out- come of the second sock drawn.ReflectionsOur study of probability using virtual rather than concrete manipulatives allowed us to spend more time on teaching and allowed the students more time to build sample spaces. In addition, the students were able to view a larger number of outcomes for each experiment. And because the students were able to perform experiments hun- dreds of times more than when they physically had to manipulate the concrete objects, they could explore the law of large numbers: The larger the sample, the more likely the result is a good predic- tor for the whole population. Throughout our study of probability, the students learned how to construct their own sample spaces and made predictions of the theoretical probability of certain outcomes. Then, they were able to compare their predictions with the experimental results that actually occurred. Because the students had to physically make changes to the spinner during an experiment involv- ing dependent events, they were able to quickly recognize the difference between dependent events and independent events. The “virtual spin” on this teaching of probability provided more opportuni- ties for successful learning for the students.
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