MATH 119 - ELEMENTARY STATISTICS
GAMES / HANDOUTS
Links will be posted here as the class progresses.
• FUN WITH PASCAL'S
TRIANGLE
QUINCUNX
("PLINKO") APPLETS AND SITES
http://www.jcu.edu/math/isep/Quincunx/Quincunx.html (This applet's better.)
http://www.ms.uky.edu/~mai/java/stat/GaltonMachine.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bean_machine (Wikipedia article)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quincunx (Wikipedia article)
The Beauty of Pascal's Triangle (See Notes
4.12)
The Magic of
Pascal's Triangle (Plinko from The Price is Right and Word Jumbles)
See Chaos and Fractals by Peitgen, et al:
GAMES DAY 2:
• COOL "BIRTHDAY
PROBLEM" APPLET!! ALSO, THE CHARTS I USED TO FIGURE OUT MY PROBABILITY OF
WINNING MY BET.
http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~susan/surprise/Birthday.html
Birthday Problem
(charts by Pitman)
Birthday List
(list of probabilities)
Our Sense of
Probability (Questions) (questions to think about; given in class) … Our Sense of Probability (Solutions)
The Difficulty of
Faking Data (Coin runs and Benford's Law - very unexpected!)
The prof. with the test where you could score
-infinity:
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/MSandE/people/faculty/howard/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_A._Howard
(Another one of my profs.)
If you like to trick or manipulate people,
check out my "Great Books" link below (especially Plous)!
GAMES DAY 1:
Coin Flips (Extra
Credit) (given in class)
The Monty Hall
Problem (given in class)
Applet: (Play the game with the computer
keeping score!)
http://www.stat.sc.edu/~west/javahtml/LetsMakeaDeal.html
Monty Hall Web Sites:
http://www.cut-the-knot.org/hall.shtml
(includes variations)
http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_07_03.html
(Deep thoughts and interesting perspectives from a
renowned mathematics writer.)
http://astro.uchicago.edu/rranch/vkashyap/Misc/mh.html
(Goes deeply into the probability behind this!)
http://www.comedia.com/hot/monty.html
Information on the cognitive psychology we
discuss in this class.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
(List of cognitive biases)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Tversky
(Tversky was one of my profs.)