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Probability Aquarium

Author(s): 
Melissa Jackson (Utah State Univ.) and Kady Schneiter (Utah State Univ.)

Melissa Jackson and Kady Schneiter
Utah State University

The Probability Aquarium is a Java applet that presents basic probability rules in the context of interactive questions based on selecting fish at random from an aquarium. For each of eight different questions increasing in complexity, the student performs sampling with or without replacement and then answers a probability question based on this experiment.

The questions for student investigation are included beneath the applet and also on the second page of this posting for easy viewing and printing.

Open the Probability Aquarium in a new window

Please note that the Java archive file is about 3MB, so this applet takes a minute or two to load and initialize.

Important note: Some versions of the Java browser plug-in have some difficulty loading the above applet from the MathDL server. If you have any difficulty viewing the applet, there are two ways to fix the problem: you can either download a more recent version of the Java plug-in (we recommend at least version 1.6.0_15) or view the alternate version of the applet (which links to an external copy of the applet, not subject to the loading problem).

Melissa Jackson (Utah State Univ.) and Kady Schneiter (Utah State Univ.), "Probability Aquarium," Convergence (February 2010), DOI:10.4169/loci003313