Season 3 • Episode: Traffic

NUMB3RS - Season 3 - "Traffic" - What is Random

Difficulty: Algebra 2 / Pre-Calculus / StatisticsDownload TI PDF
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Part I: Human Perception vs. Mathematical Randomness

When asked to place 'random' points on a grid representing raindrops falling on a sidewalk, humans naturally place them in an evenly distributed manner to avoid clusters. However, in mathematics, any truly random arrangement has an equal probability of occurring. Because there are far more ways for points to form clusters than to form a perfectly spaced grid, truly random data almost always contains clusters of points, such as a sequence of several identical numbers in a row.

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Pi Approx2.8571
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