Ashley Tan

September 1, 2015
Period 5 Kowatch
Abstract: Can you tell the recycled paper from normal paper?
Paragraph 1: summarize what was done in class, include enough detail to connect the lab
to what we are studying
In class, we did a simulation to see if my classmates can do better than random guessing.
In order to do this, I obtained one di from my teacher and rolled it one time for each person in the
class, 27 people and 27 times. This would represent one persons random guess. Rolling a di
was random because one outcome did not affect another and I was not able to influence the
outcome in anyway. I recorded a 1 or 2 as a correct guess and a 3, 4, 5, or 6 as an incorrect
guess. I ended up rolling a 1 or 2, 10 times out of 27 rolls.
The reason why we recorded a 1 or a 2 as a correct guess was because in the next step we
took three sheets of paper from a station. We had to examine each one to determine which one
was recycled. Rolling a 1 or 2 represented one sheet of paper, while the 3 and 4 represented the
second and the 5 and 6 represented a third. However, the goal was to accurately choose one
piece of paper, therefore only a 1 or 2 would be a correct roll. We carefully examined the three
papers by looking at all its qualities and seeing if one specific paper was different from the
others. It seemed obvious to me and some of my classmates that paper A seemed different
because you could physically see the fibers in the paper and it had a rougher, less smooth texture
than paper B and C.
My class and I took an educated guess on which one we thought was the recycled paper,
out of papers A, B, and C. We compiled our results and found out that 21 students out of the 27
in our class guessed that paper A was the recycled one. This was the correct answer, so paper A
technically represented rolling a 1 or 2. A reason for doing this lab is to determine whether my
classmates could do better than random guessing because we are starting to learn about
probability and odds and random guessing.
Paragraph 2: give your conclusions from the lab, state WHY you can
make those conclusions (with statistical support)
Overall, when I randomly threw dice, only 37% of the outcomes were
correct. When the classroom randomly guessed which paper was recycled,
a shocking 77.8% of the class was correct. I reached the conclusion that all
of my classmates were not completely randomly guessing and some of them
were able to correctly identify the paper. I believe this because there was a
significant difference between the papers when we were able to examine
them. If they had not been able to see the paper and just had to randomly
draw 1 number out of 3 from a hat or just randomly choose A, B, or C without
having any knowledge, I believe that the class results would have been more
similar to the rolling dice correctness percentages. It would have been very
unlikely that the whole class was able to randomly choose and get a

correctness percentage of 77.8%. This activity was almost similar to one

giving three different fruits to a class and asking them to pick out a specific
one. Since the fruits would obviously be different from each other, a large
amount of people would be able to select the correct fruit. These
conclusions can be backed up with statistical support because someone
randomly selecting one paper out of three correctly should get close to a 1/3
or 33% chance rate of guessing correctly and getting a 77.8% accuracy is
highly unlikely.