.

• one red and two white poker chips , or 3 pennies and a permanent marker
• a non see-thru container like a cup to put the chips in
• a nickel a penny and some tape
• calculator
• two dice or our own ELECTRONIC DIE
• paper and pencil

We here at themathlab.com love to perform this quick and dirty little experiment on any unsuspecting students we find. It's called the "THREE BLIND CHIPS EXPERIMENT."

Here's how it goes:

1. First place one red and two white chips in a non see-thru container while your audience is watching. Be sure to make a lot of fanfair as you do this, and stress there are TWO white and only ONE red chip in the container.
   
   
2. Next, tell the audience that you will be shaking this container, closing your eyes, and drawing out two chips at a time. You will record whether they are the same color or different colors on a piece of paper, then you will replace the two chips and draw again. You tell them you will do this 50 times.
   
   
3. Now ask them to guess which will be drawn more frequently two different colored chips or two of the same color. What do YOU think it will be?
   

GO AHEAD AND TRY THIS EXPERIMENT before you read any more, we'll wait.

(NOTE: If you don't have poker chips, try 3 pennies. Place a mark on one of them with a permanent marker. As long as they feel the same the results will be valid.)

************

DID YOU REALLY DO IT?

OKAY, WE ARE ASSUMING

THAT YOU

REALLY,

REALLY,

REALLY,

DID

DO

THE EXPERIMENT!

SO NOW,

****

Go ahead and count up all the times you drew the SAME color and how many times you drew DIFFERENT colors.

Most people are amazed at the results.

1. Find the experimental probability of flipping a coin and getting a head. Do this experiment 50 times and give your results as a fraction, decimal, and as a percent.
   
   
2. Now let's try to make an "UNFAIR" coin. Take your nickel and your penny and tape them together so that the tail on the nickel is showing and the head of the penny is showing on the other side. This should create a hybrid coin which is heavier on one side. This is known as an unfair coin. Take a guess what % of your flips will come up heads, then actually do the experiment 50 times and see how close you were?
   
   
3. Now take your two dice, or use our ELECTRONIC DIE, and roll them together. Run an experiment that will yield the probablility of rolling two numbers whose sum is nine.