Thanks for the responses to my previous blog post, where responses can be read. I was surprised at the diversity of responses and ideas with the Plinko applet. I also appreciated the feedback from others who suggested ways that this applet can be improved and made more capable of generating discussions (with, of course, our careful questions and monitoring to help). Here’s what I am thinking about the most:
1. The important of “toggling off and on” different features in the applet – the more options, the better. Many folks observed that the answer to possible questions were “given away” by things that were presented by default.
2. The inevitable divergence of questions that will emerge from us teachers and from our students the more open-ended we get with the questions.
3. I thought about the importance of having students ask / wrestle with questions at both the “micro” and “macro” level of this applet. I liked thinking about questions where students wonder about the result of individual outcomes of the “ball fall:”
- Where will the ball fall? Where will it not fall?
- Will it always fall there?
- How far from the “most likely place?”
- Do you expect any “streaks” in the path of a single ball?
- If so, how long?
- What’s the most likely bin if we change p? What’s the expected outcome Is there a relationship between p, n, and the expected outcome?
- How far from the “most likely” bin should we expect in the long run?
- How does the shape of the overall distribution change as we adjust n and p?
- How long will it take before we see a streak of all left or all right pathways?
roughlynormal
roughlynormal 