Describes an activity designed to demonstrate the birthday paradox and introduce students to real-world applications of Monte Carlo-type simulation techniques. Includes a sample TI-83 program and graphical analysis of the birthday problem function. (KHR)

Features a mathematics lesson or experiment that models probability using attribute sets and is evolved from reading literature to students. (KHR)

Describes a lesson plan in which students apply their mathematical intuition to determine win-loss possibilities of teams in a sports league and develop a formula for calculating the magic number for clinching first place. (YDS)

Presents an activity in which students gather and analyze data involving the compatibility of human blood types. Uses student surveys, Venn diagrams, and random numbers. Includes activity sheets. (Author/NB)

Draws on recent events in Major League Baseball to illustrate the relationship between experimental and theoretical probability. (Author)

Describes probability games and tasks to help students educate their primitive intuitions connected with the concept of "fairness" in the outcomes of compound events. (YDS)

Describes a series of activities using attribute blocks designed to help construct knowledge about and develop conceptual understanding of probability. (KHR)

Two studies assessed 90 elementary school students' attention to the total number of alternative and target outcomes when making probability estimates. All age groups attended to variations in the denominator and numerator and the interaction between these variables. (RJC)

Argues that Gottlieb rejects population sampling and statistical analyses of distributions as he proposes that his experimental brand of mechanistic science is the only legitimate approach to developmental research. Maintains that Gottlieb exaggerates developmental uncertainty, based on his own research with extreme environmental manipulations.…

Interviews of one child through grades one through five on several combinatorics tasks indicated the student's progress in classifying, organizing, and reorganizing data. Provides significant insight into the process by which the student learned to make proofs. (Author/MKR)

In multivariate analysis of variance studies with small numbers of subjects (15 or less) per treatment level, probability values reported by the commercial statistical packages SAS and SPSS are conservative for F approximations based on Pillai's trace and liberal for F approximations based on the Hotelling-Lawley trace. Discusses results in terms…

Reformulates the success-breeds-success (SBS) principle in informetrics in order to generate a general theory of source-item relationships. Topics include a time-dependent probability, a new model for the expected probability that is compared with the SBS principle with exact combinatorial calculations, classical frequency distributions, and…

Recommends using probability paper, also called normal probability and arithmetic probability paper, for solving probability problems. Provides six examples. (MVL)

Describes a procedure for information retrieval testing that is based on the comparison of statistically independent methods of retrieval applied to the same database. The probability ranking principle is discussed, the statistical meaning of relevance is examined, and the methodology is illustrated on a large database of MEDLINE records. (19…

A rational model of human categorization behavior is presented that assumes that categorization reflects the derivation of optimal estimates of the probability of unseen features of objects. A case is made that categorization behavior can be predicted from the structure of the environment. (SLD)