Plinko! We will play the Plinko game, record data, and make graphs. Plinko is a game played on the television show The Price is Right. A Plinko board is made by hammering a lattice-grid of nails into a (upstanding) wooden board with a row of pockets underneath. Circular disks are dropped in the top of the lattice and fall into one of the pockets below. Students will conduct an experiment, dropping the disk from various heighs up the lid, and recording how many times the disk lands in each of the pockets, and drawing a graphs, tables, and charts to record the results.
Naturally, you will discover that the distribution of falls matches up exactly to the distribution of numbers in Pascal's triangle!
We will discuss methods of data presentation: pie charts, graphs, tables, and note which kind of presentation gives results that are easiest to interpret. In this case, the table is best, since it looks just like Pascal's triangle!