The Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics
has a more recent version of this applet.
In this demonstration you specify the number of events (N) and the probability of
success for any one event (p) and push the "OK" button. The initial graph
shows the probability distribution associated with flipping a fair coin 12 times
defining a head as a success. The vertical lines represent the probabilites of obtaining
each of the 13 possible outcomes (0-12 heads). As you would expect, the most likely
outcome is 6 heads. This probability distribution is called the binomial
distribution.
The blue distribution represents the normal
approximation to the binomial distribution. It is a very good approximation in this
case. The higher the value of N and the closer p is to .5, the better the approximation
will be.
Vary N and p and investigate their effects on the sampling distribution and the normal
approximation to it.
visits since 11/6/96.