Skip to main content

Math (Un)Fair at West Point Grey Academy

On Tuesday 6 December, West Point Grey Academy hosted a Math (Un)Fair with grade 5-6(?) students presenting activities on probability and fairness. Prior to the fair, The students created games with that were either fair or unfair based on the likelihoods of participants winning or losing. They were required to list out all possible outcomes and calculate theoretical probability. At the math (un)fair, the students acted as game hosts, and collected experimental data, where they would record results and calculate experimental probability.

Overall, the event appeared to be a success, students took pride in their mathematical (and artistic!) work, as well as celebrated the work of their peers. Students continued to develop their understanding of mathematical probability through the interaction with their participants, and some continued to make adjustments to their game and hosting process to improve their methods. It seemed that all hosts and participants were engaged in the activities!

Some minor issues were raised only when students had trouble describing the probability theory behind the game and their experimentation, such as confusing the terms "even/odd" with "fair/unfair". A few students told me that their games were "even game[s]." Some students were tallying results of "even/odd" outcomes rather than "win/lose." However, it is expected that the teachers will assist the students in clarify their understanding of probability when they begin to make conclusions. Indubitably, students will have a deeper and practical knowledge of probability at the end of this learning process.

While I was not there for the process of teaching/learning and preparation for this event, there are some questions raised which may suggest improvements for recreating this event.
-Did students get to test out their ideas for the game with their peers or a "study group" (such as parents/guardians or siblings)?
-Had they had practice in describing and explaining concepts of fairness and probability in relation to their game?
-Were they shown different ways of presenting possible outcomes and recording results in a logical and efficient manner? (Some students recorded every step and implication of every step during each round!)
-Were students explained, modelled, and have the opportunity to practice how to be an informing and engaging game host?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflections on Elliot W. Eisner's "Three Curricula that Schools Teach"

Eisner sets out to explain the three curricula taught by schools, including the 1. Explicit curriculum - what is made public through course announcements 2. Implicit curriculum - the socialization through physical and behavioural structures of the school and classroom 3. Null curriculum - what is left out from our explicit curriculum Through his theory of implicit education, Eisner makes his case that is it usually more important for a student to study the teacher, rather than the course content, in an attempt to achieve a good grade. The students reads the environment created by the teacher to establish to determine how much effort they should put into a class, particularly in systems that use behaviour modification techniques. How is it that we should go about cultivating student initiative and to develop intrinsic motivation so that students find the joy of learning for themselves, rather than to please their community - teachers, parents, and peers - through their achievements...
1 comment
Read more

Letters from the Northern Front

As I read through Gerofsky's " Battleground schools: Mathematics education", it struck me to recall my mathematics education in New Zealand, and how much it pointed towards elements of the conservative and progressive approaches. I quite enjoyed mathematics up until the senior years of high school. However, at the university level, lectures and tutorials seemed to point to a conservative view. As I scanned down the table comparing the different elements of mathematics education (2008, p. 392-393), I found myself ticking off the assumptions belonging to the conservative column, although as Gerofsky mentions, this dichotomy is not always the healthiest ways to understand approaches to math education. However, it does reveal how much of my pre-conceived notions of mathematic education derive from my background as a mathematics learner, and how I now face a paradigm shift in the way I orient myself as a mathematics educator. In a bullet point that described who conservative...
1 comment
Read more

Math Art: Knot Mosaics

Peter Gustainis and I worked together to recreate Felicia Tabing's Knotical . We created the 4 tiles digitally to represent her artwork presented at Bridges Math Art 2017, then arranged the tiles in the same fashion as her original block print.To extend this artwork, we incorporated colours associated with Andy Warhol's work with pop art, giving each tile a different gradient. This allowed for a clearer representation of the transformations (symmetry, rotation, translation) present in this artwork. As you can see in the color schemes below, the work almost has a complete rotational symmetry. As a challenge, we provided an activity where students were given a set of tiles and asked to represent 2 common knots - Solomon, and Trefoil - mosaically. Here is the link to our Google Slides presentation This project was a fun inquiry to the ways that we can teach mathematical concepts alongside concepts in aesthetics - the ways that mathematicians create art through vis...
Post a Comment
Read more