KS4 Maths Lesson Plan – Explore Probability by Playing Dice Games

In many everyday scenarios, we cannot calculate a theoretical probability of something happening.

Even some simple-sounding games involving dice are complicated to analyse and the easiest way to estimate the probability of a win is often to run a simulation on a computer.

In this lesson, students are asked to estimate the probability of winning a game in which they throw an ordinary dice and move a counter that many spaces forwards.

To win, they must ‘hit ten’ by landing on the tenth square from the start. This game is too complicated for students to work out the probability of winning theoretically, so they must estimate it by playing the game several times and seeing how often they win. This enables them to calculate how much money they might be willing to pay to play the game, if the prize for winning is £1.

Download contents (Zip file):

• 1 x PDF Maths lesson plan
• 1 x PDF Hit Ten task sheet

For more KS4 maths lesson plans from Colin Foster click here.