This is part of our Secondary Curriculum collection of favourite rich tasks arranged by topic.
Which of these games would you play to give yourself the best possible chance of winning a prize?
Here are two games you can play. Which offers the better chance of winning?
Imagine a room full of people who keep flipping coins until they get a tail. Will anyone get six heads in a row?
When two closely matched teams play each other, what is the most likely result?
Chris and Jo put two red and four blue ribbons in a box. They each pick a ribbon from the box without looking. Jo wins if the two ribbons are the same colour. Is the game fair?
If everyone in your class picked a number from 1 to 225, do you think any two people would pick the same number?
Can you work out the probability of winning the Mathsland National Lottery?
In this follow-up to the problem Odds and Evens, we invite you to analyse a probability situation in order to find the general solution for a fair game.
Can you work out which spinners were used to generate the frequency charts?
You may also be interested in this collection of activities from the STEM Learning website, that complement the NRICH activities above.
