Use the interactivity to experiment. Start with 2 spinners labelled
1, 2, 3 and 4. Then each spinner is represented by the polynomial
. The computer will model your experiment by randomly
choosing one number from each spinner and recording the sum of the two
numbers. Repeat the experiment enough times for the freqency distribution
of the scores to be close to the theoretical distribution.
Look at the coefficients when you have expanded the polynomial
and compare them
to the relative frequencies in which the different possible scores occur.
Now combine the factors of the polynomial in different ways.
In each polynomial factor the powers correspond to the labels on the
spinners so that different factorisations correspond to different
labelings of the spinners. Now do a computer experiment with spinners with the new labelling.
Because the expanded polynomial is the same the
differently labelled spinners will produce scores with the SAME
relative frequencies. Try it out.