Flipping a fair coin 8 times yields 5 heads. What is the experimental probability of heads?

• A. 5/8
• B. 1/2
• C. 3/8
• D. 2/3

Answer: (A)

Experimental probability uses the observed frequency of outcomes from a specific set of trials. Here, you flipped a fair coin 8 times and saw 5 heads. The proportion of heads in this run is 5 out of 8, so the experimental probability of heads is 5/8. This reflects what happened in this particular experiment, not the long-run chance per flip.

For contrast, the theoretical probability of heads on a single fair flip is 1/2, which is why that option isn’t the experimental result here. The other numbers would correspond to different counts of heads (3 heads out of 8, which is 3/8; or unrelated proportions like 2/3). So the best answer is the observed 5/8.