Texas Instruments TI-84 PLUS SILV Guidebook - Page 42

Chapter 2: Math, Angle, and Test Operations Getting Started: Coin Flip Getting Started is a fast-paced introduction. Read the chapter for details. For more probability simulations, try the Probability Simulations App for the TI-84 Plus. You can download this App from education.ti.com. Suppose you want to model flipping a fair coin 10 times. You want to track how many of those 10 coin flips result in heads. You want to perform this simulation 40 times. With a fair coin, the probability of a coin flip resulting in heads is 0.5 and the probability of a coin flip resulting in tails is 0.5. 1. Begin on the home screen. Press  | to display the MATH PRB menu. Press 7 to select 7:randBin( (random Binomial). randBin( is pasted to the home screen. Press 10 to enter the number of coin flips. Press ¢. Press Ë 5 to enter the probability of heads. Press ¢. Press 40 to enter the number of simulations. Press ¤. 2. Press Í to evaluate the expression. A list of 40 elements is generated with the first 7 displayed. The list contains the count of heads resulting from each set of 10 coin flips. The list has 40 elements because this simulation was performed 40 times. In this example, the coin came up heads five times in the first set of 10 coin flips, five times in the second set of 10 coin flips, and so on. 3. Press ~ or | to view the additional counts in the list. An arrow (MathPrint™ mode) or an ellipses (Classic mode) indicate that the list continues beyond the screen. 4. Press ¿ y d Í to store the data to the list name L1. You then can use the data for another activity, such as plotting a histogram (Chapter 12). MathPrint™ Note: Since randBin( generates random numbers, your list elements may differ from those in the example. Classic Chapter 2: Math, Angle, and Test Operations 35