Question

analyzing a students argument
for an in - class demonstration, a teacher flips a fair coin 5 times, and each of the 5 times it lands on heads. a student argues that it is more likely to land on tails on the next, or 6th, flip. is the student correct? explain your reasoning.

Explanation:

Each coin - flip is an independent event. The outcome of previous flips does not affect the next flip. For a fair coin, the probability of getting tails on any single flip is always 0.5 regardless of previous results.

Answer:

No, the student is not correct. Each coin - flip is an independent event and the probability of getting tails on the 6th flip is 0.5, the same as it would be for any single flip of a fair coin, and is not influenced by the previous 5 heads.