Probably the Best School in the World!

Class 7n/Ma3 had been looking at chance with theoretical probability and had progressed very well

They understood that it was all about all possible outcomes in relation to successful outcomes. A good example is the flip of a coin, where there is an even chance of head or tail, namely 2 possible sides, but only one side could be landed on (½).

Theory is all well and good, but was there any value in it? We conducted an experiment to see if we could flip a coin or roll a dice 120 times to get the necessary number of successes to prove our theories. We would expect the probability of any one number on a dice to be 1/6, meaning our results should be around 20 successes for each number and the coin should get 60 successes for each side if we were right.

The students worked very well in pairs and split the workload to do 60 tallies each, deciding on the best way to record the information. Each pair was assigned a dice or coin and they had to produce their own tally table, thinking about heading, size and totals. When we discussed the results, it was clear that the theory could be used with some confidence as several pairs had exact results. We also discussed what could have made some of the results more accurate and why the coin results were much more reliable that the dice results.

Brooke said, “It was fun working with other people,” and Abbie thought, “Probability is easy when we are doing practical work.”

The whole class did brilliantly.