Last night Erika had one math question. I did not know the answer. The question was this: If you flip a coin six times, how many possible combinations of heads/tails patterns are there? I felt I should know, isn’t it like 6 factorial or something? I did know there were more combinations than I wanted to try to write down, but that wasn’t the answer.
I am proud to say that we figured it out, together. Well, I did most of the figuring; she covered the observation and nodding parts. The answer is Xy where X = the number of possible outcomes on every flip, and Y = the number of flips. So six flips (of a two-sided coin) would be 26 or 64. It is easy when you know the formula, but I’m kind of glad she didn’t know it so we could break it down and figure it out together.
In retrospect it was simple. Of course it was an exponential function because each new flip gives you two possible outcomes on all previous combinations. So if there are four unique combos with two flips, with three there will be those four combos with the third being heads and those four combos with the third being tails, or eight possibilities (23).
Sorry, this story is more “mathy” than funny, but it’s all I have today.
3 comments:
I tutored math for a year. I don't miss it.
Mom says it is all total Greek to me. If Erika is lacking in Math genes, she gets that from the bearer of the same middle name person!
This is what I am learning in my statistic class. Not really liking it so much.
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