Question

In this activity, you will spin a plastic bottle cap 50 times to find the relative frequencies of the outcomes. Then you will use the results todetermine the fairness of this situation by deciding whether the outcomes are equally likely. If you do not have a plastic bottle cap available, usethe data provided in the table.Position Frequencyside 2top up 9top down 39Part ABased on your experiment or the data provided, what is the relative frequency of the cap landing on its side?

Answer 1

To get the relative frequency, we use the following formula:

`RF=\frac{no.\text{ of times a certain outcome occurs}}{total\text{ no. of outcomes}}`

In this case, the total number of outcomes will be 50 since spinning the bottle cap happened 50 times, or we can add 9 + 2 + 39 = 50 still.

Since the question is asking the relative frequency of the cap landing on its side, then the no. of times the cap landed on its side, as shown on the table, is 2.

Therefore, the relative frequency will be 2/50 or 1/25 in simplest form.