The listing of different coin flip outcomes for the 4-Flip Trip, arranged in this format, may vividly remind students of the shape of the human bar graph (histogram) in the 6-Flip Trip from Day 1. Ask if students believe this is a coincidence or whether it might help explain what happened.
Assess students’ understanding of the concepts under investigation through verbal questioning and opportunities to record conclusions in writing. Students should use their charts or tree to justify conclusions like, “There is a 6/16 probability that a person will arrive at 0 at the end of a 4-Flip Trip.” Emphasize as needed that each of the unique sequences of flips has an equal probability of occurring.
Emphasize how probabilities of compound events can be analyzed by creating representations of sample spaces such as a tree diagram or charts of the possible outcomes.