Nicky created a simulation of how many times his favorite baseball player got a hit when he was at bat. He decided to flip a coin for each at bat, with heads indicating a hit and tails indicating a strike. He flipped the coin once and got tails. He inferred that the baseball player would strike out at his next at-bat.

Question

What important step did Nicky not follow?

A) Describe the question being simulated.
B) Outline the process for each repetition.
C) Perform the simulation multiple times.
D) Use the data to answer the question.

Answer 1

Nicky made an incorrect inference based on a single coin flip, which does not provide enough evidence to predict the outcome of future at-bats. The important step he did not follow is:

C) Perform the simulation multiple times.

Simply flipping the coin once does not yield a reliable result about the player's batting performance. A simulation should involve multiple trials to gather sufficient data for making inferences.