Video Transcript
A boy flipped a coin 100 times, and he got heads 58 times. Calculate his experimental probability of getting heads while playing this game.
The experimental probability is the number of times a certain outcome happened over the total trials that were conducted. It’s a ratio that looks like this: a certain outcome occurred over the total trials. For us, that would be the number of times heads showed over the total number of flips, which would be 58 over 100. There are a few ways we can write this probability. We can take the 58 over 100 and write it as a decimal. 58 over 100 is 0.58; it’s fifty-eight hundredths.
It’s also possible that we could simplify this ratio. We see that the numerator and the denominator are even, and that means they’re both divisible by two. 58 divided by two is 29, and 100 divided by two is 50. A simplified fractional form of this ratio is twenty-nine fiftieths, or the decimal form, 0.58. Both values represent the experimental probability this boy had when he flipped a coin 100 times and got heads 58 of those times.
