The first activity asks the question, "What is the probability of passing a test, for which you have not studied, by guessing?" This is certainly a question of interest to students. This activity is different from previous activities because students are no longer trying to make predictions about a population. It is known that one has a 50% chance of responding correctly to a true-false statement. It is known that there are ten statements on the test. What we don't know is the likelihood of responding correctly to at least 6 of these statements, thus passing the test. We can use a coin to model the correctness of each response, since there is a 50% chance of landing on either side. If we flip the coin ten times, we can model the results of one test. However, if we flip the coin another ten times (we call each set of ten flips a trial), we may get different results. So we flip the coin many, many times to estimate various frequencies in the long-run. The more trials we conduct, the closer our estimates will be to the theoretical probability. An explanation of the context of saves and attempted shots on goal may be required when completing the activity "Modeling with Other Random Devices".

It is often difficult to calculate theoretical probabilities, so we continue conducting trials (this is similar to sampling) in an attempt to estimate these values. Theoretical probabilities deal with long-run behavior, and because results vary we need many trials/samples to model this behavior. It is often difficult and impractical to conduct experiments or surveys over and over again, so we rely on simulation techniques to model natural phenomenon quickly.