The purpose of this activity is to engage students in finding an expected number that is based on equally likely outcomes.
This activity assumes the students have experience in the following areas:
The problem is sufficiently open ended to allow the students freedom of choice in their approach. It may be scaffolded with guidance that leads to a solution, and/or the students might be given the opportunity to solve the problem independently.
The example responses at the end of the resource give an indication of the kind of response to expect from students who approach the problem in particular ways.
Playing a board game, Otis needs to roll doubles in order to start.
How many turns do you expect it will take before Otis gets to start?
The following prompts illustrate how this activity can be structured around the phases of the Mathematics Investigation Cycle.
Introduce the problem. Allow students time to read it and discuss in pairs or small groups.
Discuss ideas about how to solve the problem. Emphasise that, in the planning phase, you want students to say how they would solve the problem, not to actually solve it.
Allow students time to work through their strategy and find a solution to the problem.
Allow students time to check their answers and then either have them pair share with other groups or ask for volunteers to share their solution with the class.
The student conducts 20 trials and speculates about the number of rolls required based on the results. They accept that there will be variation in the number of rolls required each time to get a double.
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The student creates a table to find all the possible outfcomes for a two dice throw. They calcualte that a double should happen every six throws.
Printed from https://nzmaths.co.nz/resource/rolling-dice at 1:50am on the 20th May 2024