Probability Enrichment Lesson As a future math educator, I hope to teach middle school or high school mathematics and, in particular,

advanced students if this is a possibility. For this reason I decided to do my final project on an enrichment lesson plan topic for gifted, middle or high school students. Philosophies in education of gifted students tend to range dramatically between different educators and non-educators. There are continuous arguments claiming that certain set-ups are better than others. Personally, I feel that one of the most effective ways to challenge gifted students is to give them the opportunity to do more advanced work in addition to the work they are already doing, assuming that they have the time and energy to put into this. Hopefully I could use a unit lesson plan such as this for students who were looking for more challenges in mathematics for example, in a mathematics club where the participants were ready and willing to learn more than is required of them. Teaching students who are willingly there makes the classroom a much more enjoyable setting. One mathematics topic that I really enjoy yet does not get as much attention as I would hope is statistics and probability. Some high schools offer classes on this topic but it is usually an elective class, not a requirement. I find this strange because many colleges require their students to take a course in statistics and probability and for many students college is the first time during which they will encounter this material. I feel that it would be helpful if some of these concepts were introduced earlier in a students education. This is one of my favorite topics because it is not quite as abstract as other mathematical concepts can be. In addition, statistics and probability have a lot of real world application which I feel is one of the most necessary parts of mathematics education. For these reasons I decided that writing a unit on

probability would be helpful for challenging students that do not feel challenged enough. Furthermore because of the real world application capabilities of probability I feel that the students would find significant enjoyment out of learning about these kinds of mathematics and their functions in everyday life. Lesson 1 Objective: The students will be able to define probability and discuss what the probabilities of 2 option events will be. Define probability Probability is the likelihood that an event will be successful over the possibilities that could occur. For instance, the probability of a coin landing heads up is . This is true because when flipping a coin there are only two possible outcomes, heads or tails. Therefore when writing the probability of an event we write it like this:

Probability =

When using the probability of a coin landing one way or another, finding the probability is rather easy because there are only two possible outcomes. We know that theoretically when a coin is tossed it will land on each side approximately half of the time. So if we decided to flip a coin one hundred times, it would land heads up about fifty times and tails up about fifty times. We call this the theoretical probability because in theory this is exactly how the results would turn out but in reality the results will differ slightly, for example the coin landing heads up 53

times and landing tails up 47 times. Although probability initially seems like a rather easy concept, things become more difficult when there are more than two possible outcomes. Do coin flipping activity

Coin Flipping Activity Put class into partners Give each partnership a quarter to flip Have one partner flip the coin 50 times while the other person records the outcomes Each group should answer the following questions: What is the probability of the coin landing heads up? What is the probability of the coin landing tails up? What is the probability that the coin will NOT land heads or tails up? Have each group share their outcomes with the class

Heads 27

Tails 23

After each group post their results, such as the results above, the class should discuss why the results are not all 25 heads and 25 tails. Discuss the differences between theoretical probability and actual probability

In theory the results of an event occurring that only has two possible outcomes should always be fifty percent. Although the actual probability will be approximately 50%, it is rare that it will actually be exactly 50%. The more times the trial is performed, the closer the experimental probability will be to the theoretical probability. Lesson 2

Objective: The students will be able to determine the probabilities of events with more than two possible outcomes. Next lets move on to a slightly more difficult topic, six-sided fair die. Dice are another interesting way of studying probability. This becomes more difficult than the probabilities of flipping a coin because rather than there being two possible outcomes there are now six possible outcomes because there are six sides to the die. To start out lets determine the probability of rolling a 6:

Probability(6) =

We found this answer because out of the six possible outcomes when rolling a six-sided, fair die, only one of the outcomes will be a success. Now put the class in groups again and give each group a six-sided, fair die. Each group should then determine the probability of rolling a 1 or a 2. Now ask what will happen if we try to determine the probability of rolling an even number?

(Prob(2) = ) + (Prob(4) = ) + (Prob(6) = ) = .

Because half of the numbers on the die are even we end up with an answer of

which

can be reduced to . Now we will try to determine the probability of rolling a five or higher. First we must determine the probability of rolling a five then add that probability to the

probability of rolling any number greater than five which in this case is only rolling a six which is shown by the following equation.

(Prob(5) = ) + (Prob(6) = ) =

= .

Now tell the students instead of just rolling a singular die we will determine probabilities when rolling two dice. In the table below we have the thirty-six different combinations that are possible when rolling two dice and their sums. The students should make a table with the various sums of the dice, like the following one. Number on Die 1 2 3 4 5 6 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Discuss why different sums are more likely than others Although initially we may have thought that it is just as likely to roll two dice and get a

sum of five as it is to get a sum of seven, this table shows us that this assumption is wrong. By looking at the table it is clear that when rolling two dice, the sum most likely to be rolled is seven and the sums least likely to be rolled are two and twelve.

M&Ms Activity Distribute a fun size bag of M&Ms to each student Have them write down how many of each color of M&M they have Determine the probabilities of the following questions What is the probability of picking a blue M&M? What is the probability of getting a brown M&M or a green M&M? What is the probability of NOT picking a red or yellow M&M?

Discuss the results Lesson 3 - Real World Applications Introduction So far we have only talked about events that are not typically useful in our everyday lives. Although probability is shown and learned more easily through the use of coins, dice, and cards, these are not the only ways in which we can use probability. It actually has a large number of real life applications. In fact you probably use or at least hear something involving probability every single day. Weather probabilities For instance if you choose to watch the news to find out what the weather will be like the next day, the meteorologist will most likely tell you what the chance of precipitation is. This chance, probably shown using a percentage, is determined by looking at other days with similar weather conditions. If a meteorologist looks at one hundred days with similar weather conditions and finds that it rained on seventy of those days, they would tell us that the chance of rain on that particular day is 70%. This is a probability.

Consumer Reports Another real world application of probabilities is in consumer reports. These reports

determine how well different products work according to different probabilities that something will not work. For instance if a company says that fifteen out of every thousand cell phones bought is defective, how likely is it that if you order two cell phones from them that both phones will be defective?

This is the probability if you were to only order one cell phone. If you were to order two cell phones we would have to multiply the probabilities.

= 0.00021

This is a very small probability that you would end up with two defective cell phones. Baseball statistics Another real world application of probabilities is sports statistics. There are sports statistics on every sport that greatly affect how well a player plays a particular support. For example lets take a look at batting averages. Batting averages are calculated by finding how many times a player gets a hit to how many times that player has been up to bat. For instance if a player gets three hits out of their ten at-bats then they have a 30% batting average. Although for baseball stats, percentages are multiplied by ten so it would be said that this certain player has a batting average of 300.

One last example of probabilities in the real world is gambling probabilities. Instant lottery tickets are sold all of the time. Suppose after selling a certain kind of instant lottery ticket thousands of times, it is shown that approximately 10% of the tickets are winners. According to this percentage you would assume that if you bought ten tickets then one of them would be a winner. Although this could be true, this is not definite. We have to remember that these statistics are configured using very large numbers then shown as a percentage. Therefore the higher number of tickets you buy, the more likely that 10% of the tickets will be winners. As I have shown probabilities can be very useful in everyday life. We see them and use them all the time without even realizing it. I would hope that a unit on probabilities would be very interesting to a group of middle school students, especially with the real world applications.

Sources http://www.mathgoodies.com/lessons/toc_vol6.html http://mmootrey.blogspot.com/2007/03/probability-in-real-world.html http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/13/04717514/0471751413.pdf