Unit 7

Making Sense of Randomness

Video: View Video Online; Video Transcript
Textbook: Introduction; History; Simple Probability Counting; Law of Large Numbers; The Galton Board Revisited; Central Limit Theorem; Other Types of Probability; Modern Probability
Interactive: Galton Board
Download PDFs: Text Chapter; Facilitator Guide; Participant Guide
Additional Resources: Bibliography

Dice Game

Probability is the mathematical study of randomness, or events in which the outcome is uncertain. This unit examines probability, tracing its evolution from a way to improve chances at the gaming table to modern applications of understanding traffic flow and financial markets.

Unit Goals

Mathematical consideration and understanding of chance took a curiously long time to arise.
The outcome of any particular event can be unpredictable, but the distribution of outcomes of many independent events that are trials of a single experiment can be predicted with great accuracy.
The simple probability of a particular ("favorable") outcome is the ratio of outcomes that are favorable to the total number of outcomes.
The Galton board is a useful model for understanding many concepts in probability.
The Law of Large Numbers says that theoretical and experimental probabilities agree with increasing precision as one examines the results of repeated independent events.
The distribution that results from repeated binary events is known as a binomial distribution.
A standard deviation is a measurement of the spread of the data points around the average (mean).
A normal distribution is determined solely by its mean and standard deviation.
The Central Limit Theorem says that the average of repeated independent events is, in the long run, normally distributed.
Conditional probability and Markov chains provide a way to deal with events that are not independent of one another.
The BML Traffic model represents the frontier of modern probabilistic understanding.

Video Transcript

How can we make sense out of the seemingly random results of throwing a pair of dice or even the haphazard flow of heavy traffic in the city? How can we talk meaningfully about any situation that is unpredictable or has an uncertain outcome? Well, welcome to the mathematics of probability.

Textbook

Mathematics has a broad set of tools to explain and describe events that appear, like the coin toss, to be random. This set of tools makes up the mathematics of probability.

Interactive

Using a machine called the Galton board, this interactive will validate the Law of Large Numbers as well as illustrate the Central Limit Theorem.