Assignment 9

Discussion

1. Read the article in the Toronto Star concerning an ESP experimens.

   Carry out the following ESP experiments within your group. Choose one member of your group to be a ``sender". The sender will have four cards each of a different suit. He or she will shuffle these four cards and then look at the top card being careful not to let anyone else see it. The sender will then concentrate on the suit of this card: hearts, diamonds, clubs, or spades. Each member of the group will try to ``receive" the message and will write down what he or she thinks the suit chosen was.

   Repeat the shuffling and sending ten times with the sender writing down each time what the correct suit was. At the end of the ten trials the sender should reveal the choices and each person will determine his or her score as the number of correct answers. The sender should then make a list of these scores and record these on the black board.

2. If you have no ESP powers, about how many should you expect to get correct in the ten trials?
3. Suppose we say that you have ESP powers if you get more than a certain number correct in the ten trials. How many should we require so that the chance that you we say you have ESP powers when, in fact, you were just guessing?

Homework assignment for Tuesday October 25

Read Chapters 16 and 17 in FPPA. Do the following review exercises from these chapters. On page 259: # 6,7 and on page 278 #1,2,6,10.

Journal Assignment for Tuesday October 25

Read the current issue of Chance News and record in your journal your answers to the discussion questions for an article of your choice.