Posts tagged with chance
Probability – flip a coin for $1b
Here is another chance to look at probability, and one that you might be allowed to play in class! Flip a coin continuously until a tail appears for the first time. If this doesn’t happen until the 20th (or later) flip, you win $1 billion. If the first tail appears before the 20th flip, you […]
Guilty or innocent? Math in the Courtroom Part II
In 2003, a Dutch nurse named Lucia de Berk was accused of murdering several patients. She was sent to prison for six years in before her conviction was overturned in 2010. The reason for the overturning? The prosecutor and the judges behind the conviction could not do math correctly. The grade 11 class delved deep […]
Probabilities and Courtroom Drama
In 1964 a Los Angeles blond woman with a ponytail snatched a purse from another woman. The thief was spotted entering a yellow car driven by a black man with a beard and a mustache. The police eventually found a blond woman with a ponytail who regularly associated with a bearded and mustachioed black man […]
DNA Revisited – Mathematical Proof of Divinity?
A single cell and the DNA that causes it to function is millions of times more intricate than anything man has created. So, is it mathematically possible for us to not be created by a higher power? For illustration purposes, let’s take a 200 page book. Could the cover, the paper, the ink and the […]
Math Wizz used Probability to Beat Lotto
Romanian economist Stefan Mandel was struggling to make ends meet. So he came up with an unlikely solution — winning the lottery. But while most people who dream of scooping the jackpot rely on dumb luck, Mandel had other ideas. Mandel spent his spare time poring over probability papers penned by mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci — […]
The Math of Christmas
In the Bible there are some 300 prophecies concerning the arrival and life of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. Here are 8 of those 300 prophecies and the mathematical probability that they happened: (1) The Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. (Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:1; Luke 2:4-6) (2) The Messiah will be a descendant of Jacob. […]
A space bus was heading your way!
Launched in 2011, Tiangong 1 was China’s first space station, serving as an experimental platform for bigger projects. The European Space Agency forecast that the bus-sized station, whose name translates as “Heavenly Palace,” would re-enter sometime this morning NZT. The Chinese space agency said it should happen during the course of today Beijing time. Based […]
Mathematics unlocks the conspiracy myths!
Major conspiracy theories such as a faked Moon landing cannot be true or they would have been exposed within a few years a scientist has concluded. Dr David Grimes, an Oxford University physicist, worked out a mathematical formula to calculate the chances of a plot being leaked by a whistle-blower or accidentally uncovered. He was […]
Dice Cricket – how will your team go?
There are several variations of using dice to investigate chance and statistics. In this version, which works well in Junior High, students captain a cricket team and have a total of 11 players. Each player scores runs by rolling the die and using the number rolled to equal their runs. You can keep adding up […]