4.5 Winning at craps.

The game of craps starts with a “come-out” roll, in which the shooter rolls a pair of dice. If
the total of the “spots” on the up-faces is 7 or 11, the shooter wins immediately (there are
ways that the shooter can win on later rolls if other numbers are rolled on the come-out roll).
Roll a pair of dice 25 times and estimate the probability that the shooter wins immediately on
the come-out roll. For a pair of perfectly made dice, the probability is 0.2222.
Answer:

4.6 Is music playing on the radio?

Turn on your favorite music radio station 8 times at least 10 minutes apart. Each time record
whether or not music is playing. Calculate the number of times music is playing divided by 8.
This number is an estimate of the probability that music is playing when you turn on this
station. It is also an estimate of the proportion of time that music is playing on this station.
Answer:
the value of each record is 1/8.

4.7 Wait 5 seconds between each observation.

Refer to the previous exercise. Explain why you would not want to wait only 5 seconds
between each time you turn the radio station on.
Answer:
because waiting 5 seconds for listening from the radio is not efficient if you want to calculate
the probability of recording music.

4.8 Use the Probability applet.

The idea of probability is that the proportion of heads in many tosses of a balanced coin
eventually gets close to 0.5. But does the actual count of heads get close to one-half the
number of tosses? Let’s find out. Set the “Probability of Heads” in the Probability applet to
0.5 and the number of tosses to 50. You can extend the number of tosses by clicking “Toss”
again to get 50 more. Don’t click “Reset” during this exercise.
a. After 50 tosses, what is the proportion of heads? What is the count of heads? What is
the difference between the count of heads and 25 (one-half the number of tosses)?
b. Keep going to 150 tosses. Again record the proportion and count of heads and the
difference betweenthe count and 75 (half the number of tosses).
c. Keep going. Stop at 300 tosses and again at 600 tosses to record the same facts.
Although it may take a long time, the laws of probability say that the proportion of
 heads will always get close to 0.5 and also that the difference between the count of
heads and half the number of tosses will always grow without limit.
Answer:
4.9 A question about dice.
Here is a question that a French gambler asked the mathematicians Fermat and Pascal at the
very beginning of probability theory: what is the probability of getting at least one 6 in rolling
four dice? The Law of Large Numbers applet allows you to roll several dice and watch the
outcomes. (Ignore the title of the applet for now.) Because simulation—just like real random
phenomena—often takes very many trials to estimate a probability accurately, let’s simplify
the question: is this probability clearly greater than 0.5, clearly less than 0.5, or quite close to
0.5? Use the applet to roll four dice until you can confidently answer this question. You will
have to set “Rolls” to 1 so that you have time to look at the four up-faces. Keep clicking
“Roll dice” to roll again and again. How many times did you roll four dice? What percent of
your rolls produced at least one 6?
Answer:
in rolling the dice, it takes at least 6 times to produce the same value in each dice.