Each person: Flip (not spin) a coin 16 times. Record the coin flip results in a table like the one below, and then count how many of your 16 hypothetical infants chose the helper toy (represented by heads):
Child # |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
# choosing helper |
Coin flip |
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Report your "number choosing the helper" as instructed by your instructor.
After several people have submitted their results: What are the most typical values that students found? How many students in your class obtained a result as extreme as the one observed by these researchers (14 making the same choice)? Do these results seem to indicate that the results actually obtained by these researchers would be surprising under the null hypothesis that infants do not have a genuine preference for either toy? Explain.
Although these results give us information about the types of outcomes we expect to get when 16 infants are choosing completely at random, we might not yet be seeing the long-term pattern in the results. So we will now turn to technology to generate more "coin tossing" results under the null hypothesis.
