That’s fair! I think that’s a good idea to explore and I think it’s great to try things out. If you try something and the kids don’t take to it, no harm done :)
One thing you could try is some probability. There’s a classic intro stats demo where you have a class come up with fake sequences of 20 coin flips in a row, and generate some real sequences of 20 coin flips as well, all while the teacher is out of the room. Then the teacher comes in and guesses which are real and which are fake.
They can do that because people tend to generate fake sequences with too few stretches of repeated heads and tails.
Kids can flip a coin, they’d have fun trying to trick you, and when you guessed right, it might seem like a magic trick. You can also teach them a few things about probability and dice rolls and help them see how it applies to board games.
I like the coin flip idea. I have done something along these lines as a single session with homeschool kids where I gave them two decks of cards and had them stack the deck while I was out. When I came back I used an Excel VBA program I had made to continually reassess the maximum likelihood for the red/black proportion and updated it as I drew cards. Didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped, mostly because I didn’t emphasize that in order to get quick results they needed to really stack the deck, and they had made it 24 red, 28 black, or something similar.
Anyway, yes, I was thinking exploring probability might have some more possibilities along these lines, so I will think about that a little more. We did optical illusions today: persistence of vision, pattern juxtaposition, etc. Then we talked about how they fool system 1 thought, but you can use system 2 techniques to defeat them, did things like measuring the apparently converging lines, slowed down the thaumatrope, etc.
That’s fair! I think that’s a good idea to explore and I think it’s great to try things out. If you try something and the kids don’t take to it, no harm done :)
One thing you could try is some probability. There’s a classic intro stats demo where you have a class come up with fake sequences of 20 coin flips in a row, and generate some real sequences of 20 coin flips as well, all while the teacher is out of the room. Then the teacher comes in and guesses which are real and which are fake.
They can do that because people tend to generate fake sequences with too few stretches of repeated heads and tails.
Kids can flip a coin, they’d have fun trying to trick you, and when you guessed right, it might seem like a magic trick. You can also teach them a few things about probability and dice rolls and help them see how it applies to board games.
I like the coin flip idea. I have done something along these lines as a single session with homeschool kids where I gave them two decks of cards and had them stack the deck while I was out. When I came back I used an Excel VBA program I had made to continually reassess the maximum likelihood for the red/black proportion and updated it as I drew cards. Didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped, mostly because I didn’t emphasize that in order to get quick results they needed to really stack the deck, and they had made it 24 red, 28 black, or something similar.
Anyway, yes, I was thinking exploring probability might have some more possibilities along these lines, so I will think about that a little more. We did optical illusions today: persistence of vision, pattern juxtaposition, etc. Then we talked about how they fool system 1 thought, but you can use system 2 techniques to defeat them, did things like measuring the apparently converging lines, slowed down the thaumatrope, etc.