Probability of Single Events: Probing Questions
Whether you are looking for a question to stimulate discussion in lesson, or a challenge at the end of a homework, then hopefully you will find these useful.
Contents
Convince Me That... keyboard_arrow_up
Back to Top
I use Convince Me That questions lots in my lessons and homeworks. Providing students with a statement and challenging them to come up with as many different ways of convincing you as possible can lead to some fascinating discussions. The different ways of seeing the same thing can also help improve the depth of students’ understanding. Thanks so much to the Thornleigh Maths Department, in particular Erica Richards, Anton Lewis and Gareth Fairclough for helping me put these together, and we will endeavour to keep adding more!
A fair coin has been flipped 3 times and has come down on Heads every time. Convince me the probability of it landing on Heads the 4th time is still 0.5
The probability of choosing an E from the word CHEESE is 0.5
Probabilities have to add up to 1
Very unlikely and impossible are different things
VI3 Treatment keyboard_arrow_up
Back to Top
We devised VI3 Treatment as a versatile way of giving students meaningful follow-up work at once we have marked their homework. The idea is that students are challenged to come up with 3 things with certain constraints. These are ideal to use as an extension for students who have got everything correct, and also as further purposeful practise for students who have got a particular question wrong. Use the ideas below and adapt them accordingly, using different numbers where appropriate. Either mark them yourself or better still, get other students to do it. Thanks so much to the Thornleigh Maths Department, in particular Erica Richards, Anton Lewis and Gareth Fairclough for helping me put these together, and we will endeavour to keep adding more!
Draw 3 sets of counters so the probability of picking a red = 2/3. The number of counters must be different each time.
Write down 3 events that have a probability of 1 (or 0, or 0.5, etc)