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Math Investigation
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The Investigation poses questions to generate interest in various mathematical topics from the text and encourages students to formulate and investigate their own conjectures. One use of the investigations is for term papers in which students report on their conjectures and the patterns they find.

Click on the Read Me file below to open the investigation in a Word file:

Read Me - Dice Roll Instructions (Word Format) (51.0K)

The Math Investigator is a data collection software program that may be used to collect data for the investigation. You may type answers onto the Word file or copy and paste in data from the Investigator.

Click here to launch the Dice Roll Investigator




Math Investigator 7.3

DICE ROLL SIMULATION on the Math Investigator simulates the roll of 2 to 5 dice and prints the sum of each roll and the number of rolls to obtain a desired sum. If you elect to have the experiment repeated, the computer will print the mean of the number of rolls to obtain the target sums.

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Starting Points for Investigations
  1. A gambling question that arose in the seventeenth century concerns the number of times 2 dice must be tossed to obtain double 6's (sum of 12).
  2. a. Try predicting the average number of rolls needed to obtain double 6's.

    b. Use the Dice Roll Simulation and at least 25 repetitive trials to determine the average number of rolls of 2 dice to obtain double 6's.

  3. Another seventeenth-century gambling question involves tossing 3 dice until obtaining a sum which is greater than or equal to 15. Use a simulation with at least 25 repetitive trials to determine the average number of rolls of 3 dice to obtain a sum greater than 15.


  4. The numbers 7 and 11 are lucky numbers in some dice games. Do you think a 7 or 11 would appear sooner by rolling 2 dice or 3 dice? Make a prediction. Use simulations with at least 25 repetitive trials to answer the following questions.
  5. a. How many times on the average must 2 dice be rolled to obtain a 7 or 11?

    b. How many times on the average must 3 dice be rolled to obtain a 7 or 11?








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