Teaching Probability through modeling Real Problems

This article describes a lesson that exemplifies an alternative approach to teaching introductory probability. In this approach, students learn to apply probability models to real-life situations and estimate probabilities through conducting simulations. (See NCTM [1981] for several articles on using simulations in teaching probability.) The particular activity described in this article has been used in high school and introductory college courses for which Macintosh laboratories and the simulation tool Pro Sim (1992) were available. However, it could be done using other software, or without computers, by having students model the problem by flipping coins and pooling the class's data.