Procedure for Making a Probability Graph

Create the simple graph for the tossing of 2 coins.

1. Open up Microsoft Excel.
2. Put cursor in cell A1, click and type the title and students name. Press "enter" when finished.
3. Put the cursor in cell E1, and type students' prediction of what outcomes will be.
4. Begin in cell A5, and moving down the column "A," enter the names for each of the events being graphed. Sample names are "TT," "HH," and "HT/TH."
5. Go to cell B4, and type the heading "Totals." Press enter.
6. Click in cell C4 and type "Trial 1" and press enter.
7. Click mouse back in cell C4, then put mouse on top of the tiny square in the lower right corner. The mouse will change from a fat cross to a skinny cross.
8. While the mouse is skinny, click down and hold the clicker down. Drag the mouse to the right, staying in row 4. As the mouse is dragged, bubble labels will appear reading "Trial 2," "Trail 3," and so on. Continue to drag until "Trail 50" can be seen. (If your experiment is less than 50 trials, change this part.)
9. When mouse is dragged to the proper cell, let up on the clicker. All 49 cells should be auto-filled with the correct headings.
10. Now, create the formulas in advance, so that the totals can be tallied as the experiment progresses. Click in cell B5.
11. Click the "autosum" icon on the tool bar.
12. Click in cell C5, and holding the clicker down, drag the mouse out to the cell below "Trial 50." The entire range of cells will have "blinking neon lights" around it indicating it is selected.
13. Press enter. Cell B5 should display a "0."
14. Click into cell B5, click "Edit" and "Copy."
15. Click into Cell B6, click "Edit" and "Paste," then do the same with cell B7. This will copy the formula into the other two cells correctly.
16. When finished, highlight the formula cells and the label cells, by clicking in cell A5, holding the clicker down, and dragging the mouse to B7. All will be highlighted. Let up on your mouse clicker.
17. Go to the button for charts and click it. A dialog box will pop up.
18. Select a pie type chart, and have the students pick the chart sub-type they want.
19. To see a preview, click a sub-type, and click the bar which says "Press and hold to view sample". The chart will be empty, of course, since there is no data yet.
20. Click "Next" and get a preview of the data.
21. Click "next" again.
22. Click the tab labeled "Legend," and click the desired placement of the legend.
23. Click the tab labeled "Titles" and type in the title of the chart again. After a split second, the title will appear on the preview.
24. Clic the tab labeled "Data Labels." Have students click "Show label and percent" and "Show key next to label," or another setting if desired.
25. Click "finish."
26. CLick on the empty pie chart and move the graphic down under the rows with the data.
27. Click in a cell that is BELOW row 7 (or the lowest row of your data) and TO THE RIGHT of the graph. Then click "Window" "Freeze Panes." Now, the scroll bar at the bottom will scroll the right half of the screen without moving the left half. This way the pie chart will always be visible.
28. Begin the coin tosses, and in the column for trial 1, put a number "1" in the correct row: C5, for TT, C6 for HH or C7 for TH/HT. Press enter.
29. As soon as enter is pressed, the pie chart and sums will be updated.
30. Continue until all 50 trials are complete.

Customize the pies, backgrounds and text.

1. Click once on one of the pie sections. All sections will have a dot in them.
2. CLick in one of the sections a second time so that only it is selected. Then keeping mouse over the section, RIGHT click. A menu will pop up. Or, student can click "Format" on the menu bar.
3. Click the option "Format Data Point," using a normal left click.
4. At this point, a different color may be selected for the section, if desired. However, other more interesting choices exist.
5. Click the bar with the words "Fill Effects."
6. Experiment with the following choices:

• One color. Choose color and mix with light and dark. Try different shading styles.
• Try the same thing with two colors. Again, try different shading styles.
• Click "preset" and look through all the multi colored sets, and see how they differ with different shading styles.
• Click the tab entitled "Texture." More texture choices can be downloaded from the Internet and access on hard drive by clicking "Other texture."
• Click the tab entitled "Pattern" and look at the different patterns of two colors that can be made.
• Click the tab entitled picture. Any graphic can be inserted from the bar "Select Picture" and used in the pie sections.

9. When a color/pattern has been selected for the different sections of the pie chart, carefully click one time background called the plot area. Using the steps above, customize the plot area. When right clicking, "Format Plot Area" will be on the pop up menu, and that should be selected.
10. Finally, do the same for "chart area," by carefully clicking one time the area close to the edge of the chart graphic.
11. All text can be double clicked to get a dialog box of text choices: font, color, size, etc.