Overall Notes

• There is one version of this assessment provided in the Teacher Resources Materials (TRM). Use this assessment as-is or use it as a model to create your own.

• If you are making your own assessment, consider using the test bank and the ExamView software.

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Common Student Errors

• Students often struggle to fully explain how to set up a simulation. Remind them to first describe how the random process (die roll, random number generator) corresponds to outcomes in their simulation and second to explain what one repetition of the simulation represents.

• Students will sometimes mistakenly believe that all outcomes in the sample space are equally likely to occur (so the probability of winning the lotto is ½!).

• Students will often forget to subtract out the joint probability when using the General Addition Rule. To help, remind them how students who could do both Taco Tongue and Evil Eyebrow got double counted.

• When filling in values for a Venn Diagram, students will often put the total number for Event A in the left pacman, when it should be the sum of the left pacman and the football that equals the total number for Event A. See the 4-hour detention part of this blog post.

• Students sometimes misinterpret “or” as being one or the other, but not both. For statistics class “or” means one or the other or both (Starbucks “or” versus Applebee’s “or”).

• Students often confuse the symbols for “union” and “intersection”. Point out that the union symbol looks like an “u” for “union” and the intersection symbol looks like an “n” for “and”. 

• Students will incorrectly check P(A|B) versus P(B|A) to check for independence. Remind them of the definition of independent events: knowing the outcome of one event does not change the probability of the other.