Thursday, April 5, 2012

M&M Probability

To introduce the students to the concept of certain and impossible, I gave each student a bag of M&M candy. I told the students that they could eat the candy but they could only eat the pink ones. Of course they immediately yelled out "There aren't any pink ones!" I said, "Oh. Well, you can only eat the white ones." Of course they yelled out "There aren't any white ones!" So I asked them, "Is it possible to eat pink or white M&Ms from your bag?" and they said "No!" This led into a discussion that it was impossible because there weren't any of that color to begin with. I then had them eat all of the yellow M&Ms except for two. I think asked them if they thought would pull out a yellow piece of candy from the bag if they closed their eyes. They said no because there were only a few of that color left. We discussed that it was possible, but not probable. I asked them if they closed their eyes if they would pull out a piece of candy from the bag and they said "yes" because there was only candy in the bag. So, we discussed that since there was only candy in the bag, it was certain they would pull out a piece of candy and it was impossible to pull out anything else. We continued with this lesson through various different scenarios.

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