I agreed to do an hour lesson/activity for a group of 12 year old boys on “math”… and then I completely forgot about it. The lesson is tomorrow evening
It’s a small group, just a few boys. My thoughts when I agreed to this were around showing cool math visuals like fractals and such. I’d like to do a game or two if possible. My goal is to make it as interactive as possible, and as little lecture-like as possible.
Any suggestions from the group? I probably shouldn’t have forgotten I agreed to do this, but I’m hoping I (or you) can come up with some fun ideas by tomorrow evening.
Have them spin a dice and move around a monopoly board and show them that as they spin the dice more the spins fall around the expected probability. You can mark which properties were landed on most often and show them how math can help them strategize better.
You can show them expected probability of different outcomes (HRs vs singles in baseball) and explain to them the analytics that everyone complains about. Maybe you can explain to them why the Bills went for 2 twice instead of kicking the extra point both times…
I’m looking for a short (2-5 minute) video to kick off the night. Here are some candidates I’ve found. No idea how well these will go over with 12 year olds lol.
I’ve also thought about demonstrating the Monty Hall problem with candy or something. I’ve talked to them about it a while ago, and it might be fun to see if they remember to switch doors.
Not sure where 12-year-olds are in their Education, but:
Pythagorean Theorem using only drawings.
Showing sum of three numbers cubed is equal to the square of the sum of the numbers, using that image shown here somewhere.
Found my “The Dangerous Book for Boys”… hmm, not much about math, but Pages 109-110 are important.
Page 198 is about playing poker (draw and hold 'em), and there are some odds included but no idea how they are determined. So, showing how they are determined would be math.
Come up with “The Game of Ruin”. Demonstrate how insurance is a transfer of risk and uses probability to price appropriately (both to be competitive and avoid insolvency).