Roll These Dice

'Roll These Dice' printed from https://nrich.maths.org/

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Red dice with 4 dots on the top; green dice with 3 dots on the top; red dice with five dots on the top

In this activity, you will need two dice that are the same and one that is different. We have chosen two red dice and one green dice.

We are going to roll the dice and add up the numbers on the two red dice, then subtract the number on the green dice.

In the picture above, the number on one red dice is $4$ and the number on the other red dice is $5$, with the number on the green dice being $3$. We add together $4$ and $5$ to make $9$ and then subtract the $3$ which gives us a final answer of $6$.

You'll need to roll your dice many times and see what numbers you make each time after doing the addition and subtraction.

It would be good to find out:

what are the final answers by doing the addition and subtraction each time?
what are all the different possible numbers?
is there a good way of making sure you find them all?
how will you record what you've found out?

Now have a go!

Look at your results and write down some questions that you could ask about them. For example, do any of them have the same answers? If so, why?

Then you could ask yourself, "I wonder what would happen if, instead, I ...?''