Fun with Probability! The Probable Pen in the Cereal Box Student Worksheet Name __________________

1. Predict the number of pens you will get for each color, and the total number of pens.
2. Using each side of a die to represent one colored pen, tabulate the number of rolls it takes until you have at least one of each color.
3. Count the total for each color and record the total number of pens you got.
4. Predict the total number of each color for your whole class, and the total number of pens for your whole class.

	Blue	Green	Yellow	Orange	Red	Purple	Total
1. Prediction
2. Tally
3. Actual Totals
4. Prediction of Class Totals
5. Actual Class Totals

Questions

1. How many boxes of cereal did you have to purchase to get one pen of each color? ______ (Remember, you had to buy one box of cereal to get each pen).
2. How many boxes did you predict? ______ Was it more or less? ________
3. Why do you think your prediction is different from the actual? _________________
   ___________________________________________________________
4. How many boxes did your entire class buy? ________
5. What was the average or mean number of boxes per student? The average can be calculated by dividing the total number of boxes (#4) by the total number of students. __________
6. The expected value is the number of boxes we would expect to buy on average if we repeated this experiment over and over. For this problem, the expected value is _____.
7. Was your class's average (#5) more or less than the expected value? (#6) ______
8. Why do you think this is the case? ____________

Copyright (c) University of Illinois, 1996