Objectives
Students will be able to:
- Recognize and capture the variability in tossing dice using simulated samples of the same size (i.e., repeated samples for the same number of dice in a toss)
- Identify possible approaches for maximizing outcomes of a chance game
- Recognize the value of simulation in developing understanding of a problem
- Identify and use conditionals and accumulation commands in creating a simulation
About the Lesson
Students engage in a dice game with the goal of finding the optimum strategy for winning, in this case, maximizing the possible number of points when tossing dice as long as no sixes show up in a toss. After experimenting with actual dice, students use technology to generate random integers representing the situation and explore how technology can facilitate their investigation. They investigate finding an efficient way to eliminate certain subsets of each set of random numbers (those with a six) and finding a way to accumulate the results of each simulation (typically with some guidance from their teacher).