A spinner has 5 equal-sized sections with different colors. You spin the spinner 50 times. The results are shown in the table. Find the theoretical and experimental probabilities of spinning blue.

Red Green Blue Yellow Orange

8 11 15 9 7

The theoretical probability is

.

The experimental probability is

.

Question 2

What do you think will happen to the experimental probability when you spin the spinner 400 times?

The experimental probability will stay the same.

The experimental probability will get farther from the theoretical probability.

The experimental probability will get closer to the theoretical probability.

a) If the spinner is fair, then each color must have the same probability, this means that the probability for each color is the number of times that the color (in this case blue) is in the spinner divided the total amount of colors in the spinner, then the theoretical probability for each color is:

Pt = 1/5 = 0.20

The experimental probability can be found by dividing the number of times that the spinner landed on a given color (in this case for blue we have 15 times) divided the total number of spins (50)

Pe = 15/50 = 0.30

B) As we increment the number of spins, we should see that the experimental probability gets closer to the theoretical probability.