Question

Vanessa knows that about 20% of the students in her school are bilingual. She wants to estimate the probability that if 3 students were randomly selected, all 3 of them would be bilingual. To do so, she will use a spinner with 5 equally sized sections labeled as either "bilingual" or "monolingual". She will spin the spinner 3 times, record the results, and repeat the process 50 times.

How many of the 5 sections should she label "bilingual"?

How many of the 5 sections should she label "monolingual"?

Answer 1

1 section should be labelled "bilingual".

4 sections should be labelled "monolingual".

Explanation:

If 20% of students in the school are bilingual, then 80% of students in the school are monolingual, since 100% - 20% = 80%.

If the spinner is to be divided into 5 equally sized sections, with each section labeled as "bilingual" or "monolingual" to represent the corresponding proportion of students in the school, then:

Bilingual

20% of 5

= 20/100 × 5

= 100/100

= 1 section

Monolingual

80% of 5

= 80/100 × 5

= 400/100

= 4 sections

Therefore:

• 1 section should be labelled "bilingual".
• 4 sections should be labelled "monolingual".