Question

Megan claims that her horse can do simple addition problems. She showed her horse eight different cards with simple addition problems, and the horse was able to tap his foot to indicate whether the answer was correct or incorrect. The horse correctly identified all eight cards. Rob didn't believe Megan's horse could do addition, so he set up a trial to test whether the horse was just guessing. He flipped eight coins to see how many would land tails up. He did this 53 times, and the results are shown in the dot plot below: Based on these results, can Megan's horse add?
A)No, the chances of getting eight correct by guessing are very low
B)Yes, the chances of getting eight correct by guessing are very low
C)Yes, it is likely to get them all correct
D)No, horses can't add

Answer 1

Hello!

As we can see in the plot, the probability of the horse getting all eight answers correct is very small. The horse has to have had its lucky horseshoes on, because the answer has to be A.

The reason being, the most common result of Rob's trial was four, which is half of eight. Each coin had a 1/2 chance of being tails up. The horse also had a 1/2 chance of getting each question right.

So as we can see, the answer is A (D does not relate to the data at all).

I hope this helps!