Question

A fair coin is flipped 10 times and lands on heads 8 times. Why is there a difference between the experimental and theoretical probabilities of observing 8 heads in 10 coin flips?
A.
Since the number of heads in the 10 coin flips is 8, the theoretical probability of observing a head in a coin flip increases from 0.5 to 0.8.

B.
Since 10 is a large enough number of trials, there is probably some error in the recording of the coin flip outcomes.

C.
The theoretical probability has no basis in reality, so the new probability of flipping heads is now 0.8.

D.
There should be a larger number of trials. With 500 flips of the coin, the experimental probability will likely approach the theoretical probability of 0.5.

Answer 1

D. There should be a larger number of trials. With 500 flips of the coin, the experimental probability will likely approach the theoretical probability of 0.5.

The difference between the experimental and theoretical probabilities of observing 8 heads in 10 coin flips is likely due to the small sample size of only 10 trials. As the number of trials increases, the experimental probability should approach the theoretical probability of 0.5 for a fair coin.