Monday, 25 February 2013

The probability of finding love

I bought a box of gingerbread letters L-O-V-E

We picked letters out at random and counted how many turns it took to find 'LOVE'. 
First we said the letters had to be chosen in the right order. 
Then they could be chosen in any order, as long as we ended up with LOVE.
There were 4 L biscuits, 4 O biscuits, 5 V biscuits and 5 E biscuits.



The probability of finding 'LOVE' and selecting the letters in the right order, on average it would take 200 attempts to find 'LOVE'.


But if you're not as picky and happy to find 'LOVE' in any order as long as it's love, then the probability is 1 in 7.
And then we tried it out and sure enough in seven attempts we found LOVE once...
Rosie was the only one to find LOVE!

and at the end of the maths lesson, we could decorate and eat LOVE!

For online practice of probability, we used:

15 comments:

  1. ooh, i love this as a practical maths experiment :)

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  2. Super idea that really can be applied to many ages! Thank you!

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  3. Wow I would have just eaten them!! I love finding new ideas for everyday things, thanks!!

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  4. That is great, my daughter wants to do that now :)

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  5. ummmm....I probably would have eaten them before the experiment was done. I never was any good at math!

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  6. Nothing better than a tasty reward at the end of the lesson!

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  7. What was the probability of the love being enjoyed?

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  8. What a wonderful sweet lesson!

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  9. I never thought of it quite like that before! Very creative and fun.

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  10. Love it... am sending this to my
    daughter for her kids....
    good post

    sandy

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  11. Hmmmm, I may have to share this with my unmarried daughter!

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  12. Cute, cute, cute idea! We have worked with probability a bit this year, but I LOVE this!

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  13. Excellent way to officially play with ones food. I LOVE it. :)

    Visiting today from Super Sunday Sync.

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  14. Wow. I loved this.

    I can actually see a book evolving from this neat post.

    What an absolutely creative and clever way to use this letter!

    My mind is racing on this one!

    Thanks for linking.

    A+

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