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Binomial and Geometric Distributions Table Request #2271

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Mosteller opened this issue Dec 4, 2024 · 2 comments
Open

Binomial and Geometric Distributions Table Request #2271

Mosteller opened this issue Dec 4, 2024 · 2 comments

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@Mosteller
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Mosteller commented Dec 4, 2024

I would love for there to be a way to view the discrete probability distribution as a table for binomial and geometric distributions (all discrete probability distributions that NumWorks supports for that matter).

For example: If you were looking at a binomial distribution with 4 trials and a success rate of 0.5, there would be a secondary tab at the top called TABLE. When you click on it, it would display:

X: | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
Probability: | 0.0625 | 0.25 | 0.375 | 0.25 | 0.0625 |

So that way students can instantly see the distribution as probabilities instead of having to calculate P(X=0), P(X=1), P(X=2), P(X=3), and P(X=4) separately.

You can work around this by going to statistics, typing in V1={0,1,2,3,4} and N1 fill with function N1=binompdf(V1, 4, 0.5). This is too tedious. It would makes sense to have a TABLE tab in the discrete distributions.

The only issues I can see with this is that infinite discrete distributions like geometric would need a scroll feature so you can scroll down to see P(Y=n) for any n>0. There could also be a feature here where it lets you combine subsequent columns into one after a certain desired cut off. Like this:

Y: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5+ |
Probability: | 0.5 | 0.25 | 0.125 | 0.0625 | 0.0625 |

Here P(Y=5+)=P(Y=5)+P(Y=6)+P(Y=7)+.....

I just think that it would make the experience in AP Stats more user friendly and "teachable" with an option to view table for discrete probability distributions.

***EDIT: The tables did not show up as I originally typed them. I hope my meaning is still clear. ***

@ukr-reader
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And/or perhaps being able to move from column to column on the bar chart and have the probability P(X=x) displayed underneath, similar to how coordinates are shown in the Grapher app.

@fbeleznay
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I second both suggestions.
For the moment, here is a less tedious workaround:
In the grapher just define y=binompdf(x,4,0.5) and click on display values. It will display the probabilities (if the step size is at the default 1).

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