Question

Mark noticed that his bus is late to school 5% of the time. He wants to design a spinner he can use to simulate the situation and determine the probability that the bus will be late three times next week. How should Mark divide his spinner to best simulate the situation?

Answer 1

The more painstaking way would be to divide the spinner up into 100 pieces, and shade in 5 of those pieces. Since 5/100 = 0.05 = 5% this means that landing on any of the 5 pieces has a 5% chance of happening.

A better way to do this is to use 20 slices instead. This works because 5/100 reduces to 1/20 (divide top and bottom by 5). Instead of shading in 5 slices, Mark should shade in 1. If you use a calculator, you should see that 1/20 = 0.05 = 5% as well.

The second option is more practical but even then a spinner with 20 sections is still a lot. I think it might be better for Mark to pull random numbers out of a hat, or let the computer generate random numbers.

Answer 2

Answer:

the answer is 20 equal-sized sections

Step-by-step explanation: