Showing posts with label experiments. Show all posts
Showing posts with label experiments. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Is picking a number randomly really random?

Question:
Is picking a number randomly really random?

Materials:
1 hat, 1 sheet of paper, 1 pencil

Method:
Step 1- Tear up ten equally sized sheets of paper.
Step 2- Write the numbers from 1-10 on each sheet.
Step 3- Put the papers into the hat.
Step 4- Pull papers out of the hat 30 times.
Step 5- Record each time

Results:
#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10
IIIIIII III II II III III IIII III I II

My Conclusion:

After drawing numbers 30 times, I saw that 1 came up the most. It clearly wasn’t an accident because it was 3 (1/10) more than the second place number which had only 4. The lowest number was 9 with only 1 drawing of that number. The median of the results were 3.5 which was awfully close to the average of 3. So in conclusion, the answer to the question of “Is picking random numbers really random?” would be no, not really according to my investigation.
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