What are your chances of picking every game? How does the change from 64 to 65 to now, 68 teams in the field complicate things? How many brackets would you need to fill out to pick every possibility? How many reams of paper would you need to print all of those brackets? Let’s do the math! Also, check out the video below that explores your odds of picking all games in the tournament perfectly.
Celebrated by 1/4th of the world’s population, Lunar New Year begins on Friday, February 12th. This will be the year of the Metal Ox. The year’s name is a combination of 10 Heavenly Stems and 12 Earthly Branches creating a…
Act One: Check out the video slide show. What questions do you have? The Activity: Stacking Jack Suggested Question: How many different ways can I stack Jack? That is, how many different color arrangements are there? If I wanted to take…
How many games are played in each round of the World Cup? In the opening round each of the four teams in a group must play each other (round robin format). From then on each round is a knock-out round…
Justify has won the Triple Crown. He’s the 13th horse to ever win all three races … Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes. Amazing! How do you calculate compound probability? Skip the betting odds and deal only with the…
The NBA court has a 3-point line that separates how many points a player will earn for his team by making a basket from outside of that line. Here’s a simplistic picture of 1/2 of an NBA full court. Teams…
You can order a ton of combos at Chipotle. They advertise that there are 65,000 ways to order their meals. Do you think that is correct?
Act One: Show this clip of the recent Price is Right program. What questions do your students have? We were wondering what the chances are of 3 contestants in a row, each spinning $1.00, and earning $1,000 each. Act Two:…
Time to let students become naturally curious about probability. In this activity students work in teams to record the frequency of rolled dice combinations. They observe the difference between experimental and theoretical outcomes and consider how sample size affects how the…
I want to find a way to keep my photos, documents, videos and music in a place that is safer than on my computer. If my Macbook Air melts, where can I keep my irreplaceable files so that they aren’t…
This year, the Chicago Bears have created a schedule-predicting contest with the prize being two tickets to all 16 home and away games. Plus air fare and lodging for the road games Plus $500 per road game in walking-around money…
World Cup ranking – Students explore the ranking formulated from each team’s previous 4 years of play in their geographical divisions. The formula is complex and weighted. Is it fair? 5.OA, 5.NBT, 5.NF.B, 6.NS.B, 6.EE, 6.SP, 7.EE, 8.F, 8.SP, HSA World…