Theoretical vs. Experimental

In class we learned about theoretical probability vs. experimental probability. Theoretical probabilty is the probability of something happening under ideal conditions with no experiemnt occuring. For example, if you use coins, your outcomes are heads or tails, therefore making your theoretical probability of getting heads 1/2. Then with experimental probability it is calculated using observations from data. This means that if you took a coin and tossed it 20 times, you get 15 heads and 5 tails, what would the probability of getting heads be? I initially thought that nothing would change, but it does change because you use the data that you already have which is 15 heads out of 20 tosses and then you simplify that to get a probability of 3/4 of getting a heads on the next toss.

To help reinforce this idea we did an activity of playing rock-paper-scissors with a partner. The activity had us play 45 rounds of rock-paper-scissors in order to better see and understand how experimental probability. We were then instructed to write down our probability of winning ourselves, probability of our partner winning and the probability of us tying. The activity then asked us a series of questions about probability with rock-paper-scissors based off of the experiment that we performed. This was a good activity for me to do because it also compared the experimental probability to the theoretical probability so that I was able to actually see the differences between the two types of probability and how each one worked. I am going to attach some pictures of the activity that my partner and I filled out so that it is easier to see and understand what we were doing and understand why it was such a good learning tool for me. 

https://illuminations.nctm.org/adjustablespinner/