To do these exercises, go to www.macmillanhighered.com/fapp10e.

Question 8.116

3. One of the few players to have a better field goal percentage than free throw percentage, basketball star Shaquille O’Neal made about half (53%) of his free throws in his 21-year NBA career. Use the Probability applet to simulate 100 free throws shot independently by a player who has probability 0.53 of making each shot. (Toss 50, 50, without clicking “Reset.”)

  1. What percentage of the 100 shots were made?
  2. Start the process again, this time repeating 10 tosses 10 times so that you can keep track of the individual hits and misses. Examine the sequence of hits and misses after each click on “Toss” and keep track of the longest run of shots made and the longest run of shots missed. How long were the longest runs in the 100 shots taken? (Sequences of random outcomes often show longer runs than our intuition expects.)