Download Chapter 5 Activity 1-in-6 game: simulation As a special promotion for

Chapter 5 Activity
1-in-6 game: simulation
As a special promotion for its 20-ounce bottles of soda, a soft drink company printed a message on the
inside of each bottle cap. Some of the caps said, “Please try again!” while others said, “You’re a winner!”
The company advertised the promotion with the slogan “1 in 6 wins a prize.” The prize is a free 20-ounce
bottle of soda, which comes out of the store owner’s profits.
Seven friends each buy one 20-ounce bottle at a local convenience store. The store clerk is surprised
when three of them win a prize. The store owner is concerned about losing money from giving away too
many free sodas. She wonders if this group of friends is just lucky or if the company’s 1-in-6 claim is
inaccurate. In this Activity, you and your classmates will perform a simulation to help answer this
question.
For now, let’s assume that the company is telling the truth, and that every 20-ounce bottle of soda it fills
has a 1-in-6 chance of getting a cap that says, “You’re a winner!” We can model the status of an
individual bottle with a six-sided die: let 1 through 5 represent “Please try again!” and 6 represent
“You’re a winner!”
1. Roll your die seven times to imitate the process of the seven friends buying their sodas. How many of
them won a prize? Repeat this process three times (so you will conduct three ‘rounds’). For each
‘round,’ (a round is rolling the die seven times), record the number of ‘wins’ your team got below. So
you will have three pieces of data below (the total number of wins for each round of seven rolls). So, for
example, in round 1 (you rolled 7 times), you may have gotten 2 wins. That’s your first piece of data. For
your second round, you may have gotten 1 win. That’s your second piece of data. Then for your last
round of 7 rolls, you may have gotten 5 wins. That’s your third piece of data that you will write below.
2. Write your team’s number of ‘wins’ on the board; then input the entire class’ data into Minitab and
create a well-labeled, scaled dot plot. Copy and paste your dot plot below.
3. Looking at your dot plot, what percent of the time did the friends come away with three or more
prizes, just by chance? Does it seem plausible that the company is telling the truth, and that the seven
friends just got lucky? Explain.
As the Activity shows, simulation is a powerful method for modeling chance behavior.
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