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Showing posts from March, 2018

What are the Odds?

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Odds in favor and odds against. I really had not put much mathematical thought into the simple question, "what are the odds?" It surprised me when I encountered some of these math problems in our probability homework/unit. First, I really had no idea how to calculate these problems. Second, I really hadn't thought about the fact that you could calculate the odds of something occurring. I feel as though I knew this was possible, but hadn't given it much thought. I was excited to learn how to work out these problems and how I could find the odds in favor of an event happening or the odds against that event occurring. I could not remember a time where I calculated the odds of an event. I really enjoyed the definitions and examples that this website provided for odds in favor and odds against,  Mathplanet . This gave me an idea of what these questions were actually asking of me. I found the formulas of odds in favor and odds against from our Textbook to be extremely hel

The Possible and Impossible...

We kicked off MAT 257 with Probability! I remember in Elementary School I really enjoyed probability. I was a little nervous to start probability in this class because I wasn't sure if I would remember everything or not. I was also worried that many things may have changed with the new Common Core standards.The first thing I thought of when thinking about probability were Tree Diagrams. I remember I had a really hard time with these when I was in school and it took me a long time to understand how they worked. I found this website, MathIsFun , to be extremely helpful at explaining what a Tree Diagram looks like and how they are used when dealing with probability problems. Going through my activities and homework helped remind me of the many methods to use when dealing with probability problems. I personally find it very helpful to draw pictures for many of these problems. A visual representation of events makes it a lot easier to see what is happening and understand what will hap