A Sticky Gum Problem Analysis

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In A Sticky Gum Problem we have to find out how much a parent must spend for all their children to have the same color gumball. The whole POW can be related to probability. This POW did not have any specific problem but there were three actual problems. I realized that all of the problems are based on the same thing. The only info they give you is the number of kids and the number of different colored gumballs. In each problem, gumballs are really cheap and only cost a penny. I figured that you can just make chart to get your answers for all of the problems. The first question states that Mrs. Hernandez has twins who both want the same color gumball. The twins don’t care what color it is as long as the gumballs are the same. The gumballs…show more content…
When Mr. Jones walked by the gumball machine he had his twins who both wanted the same color gumball but it doesn’t matter which color. There were four gumball colors red, white, blue, and green. What is the highest amount of money that Mr. Jones can spend to get two of the same color gumballs? The answer I got was five cents because if he got one of each color spending four cents he would only need to spend one more penny. In my next question, there is Octomom with eight kids and two colors of gumballs (red, white). How much money will Octomom have to spend to get all eight of her children the same color gumballs? The most Octomom could spend is fifteen cents if you got seven of each color gumball then on your next try you would end up with eight of one color. I organized all of my information in tables that are on the attached paper. The first pattern I see is that when there are more people you spend more money. The second pattern I saw was that when there were less gumball colors you spent less money and had better chances of getting the color you might want. A generalization I saw was that we put in two things (# of kids, colors of gumballs) and get out one (money spent). I can say that this problems difficulty was a medium for me. The problem was easy to find answers, but the hard part was trying to explain your work in

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