3 Male Succession Probability

A coin was tossed 100 times. Tails represented having a female and heads represented having a male. Exactly three males occurred in succession only twice.

BoyGirlChart

This chart exhibits data that show the 51:49 male to female (heads to tails) ratio found from 100 coin tosses. Since exactly three males (heads) in a row occurred twice the probability of having exactly three males in succession is 2%. Therefore, the probability of Ms. Williams having three boys in succession is very rare.

100-(3-1)= 98

2/98= 0.02 or 2%

If we toss our coin 10,000 times, the random variable should stabilize to a 50:50 ratio, as the Law of Large Numbers states.

MacEwen, B. (2008, spring). Psychology 261. Class lectures. University of Mary Washington.

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3 Responses to “3 Male Succession Probability”

  1. Matt Dugan Says:

    Great job including the chart of boys vs. girls. I’ll definitely do that next time. It adds to your blog. Your use of bolded text stands out well against your background, we also chose a black presentation for our blog. Nice work so far.

  2. arielpiccione Says:

    Thank you very much for the input!! I put the chart in PowerPoint, saved it as a JPEG (not a GIF) and put it in that way… works much smoother!

  3. I like how you used a thumbnail icon to show your data. I noticed that a lot of people just typed all their heads/tails or numbers in to the blog which takes up a lot of room. Your blog looks more organized and clear!

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