Suggested Websites

www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/ “Buffon’s needle” is a probability problem first stated in 1777 by Count Buffon: If you drop a needle on a sheet of lined paper, what is the probability that the needle crosses one of the lines? In the simplest case, the length of the needle is the same as the distance between the lines. Some fairly advanced math shows that the answer is , or about 0.637. A number of websites simulate dropping a needle many times to estimate this probability. A simulation of this activity, as well as many other probability exercises, can be found by clicking on “Probability” on this website.

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www.gamblingexposed.org/gamblingexposed_708-389-1127__008.htm You may also be interested in the debate over legalized gambling. For the case against this practice, visit the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling.

www.americangaming.org For the defense by the casino industry, visit the American Gaming Association.

illuminations.nctm.org/Lesson.aspx?id=956 For an example of a noncasino game involving probability and expected value, try playing the dice game “Skunk.”

www.glennshafer.com/assets/downloads/articles/article50.pdf This website links to the article “The Early Development of Mathematical Probability” by Glen Shafer.

www.learner.org/courses/againstallodds/ The online materials in Units 19 and 22 from Against All Odds: Inside Statistics are directly applicable to material discussed in this chapter. Unit 19, Probability Models, provides a good review of the Probability Rules in Sections 8.2 and 8.3. To help gain a better grasp on the sampling distribution of and the Central Limit Theorem, try viewing the video of Unit 22, Sampling Distributions. (This ties in nicely with Applet Exercise 4.)