One of your students does not understand why the expected va

One of your students does not understand why the expected value of an experiment is not one of the outcomes. Explain this idea. Do not give a conversation between you and your student.

Solution

There may be several possible reasons behind the same. Few reasons behind this, according to me are:

(1) As a teacher discusses the main conceptual points and leaves some surfacial activities for the student, so that the student might not be handicap in thinking / reasoning about the self exploring activities. But even some students fail to achieve the same. So he / she might not get the expected value of an experiment, which is one of the outcomes.

(2) Some times even having the complete understanding of experiment student misses some critical step / points and due to that his / her result deviates from the desired outcomes.

(3)  There are possibilities equipments available with the student not upto the mark to provide desired outcome even student followed every steps of the experiment properly. In such cases the outcomes are normally becomes close to the desired result.

(4) Misunderstandings of the problem statements by the student / limitations in the problem statements itself.

(5) Some personal problem of the student when experiment is being performed. and so forth ...