Grade 6 · Math · Lesson 29

Theoretical vs Experimental Probability

There are TWO ways to talk about the probability of an event. Theoretical probability is what you EXPECT to happen, worked out from the structure of the experiment - like 1/2 for heads on a fair coin or 1/6 for rolling a 4 on a fair die. Experimental probability is what ACTUALLY happens when you run the experiment and count - like 28 heads in 50 flips, which is 28/50 = 0.56.

What this lesson teaches

1Compute theoretical probability by counting favourable outcomes over total possible outcomes
2Compute experimental probability by running trials and dividing favourable outcomes by total trials
3Compare predicted theoretical values with actual experimental results from the same experiment
4Explain why experimental probability moves closer to theoretical probability as the number of trials grows

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