CHANCE ENCOUNTER BOOK (Seeing and Thinking Mathematically in the Middle Grades)

Designed for grades six and seven, Chance Encounters provides opportunities for students to test, revise, and design games and simulations as they examine key concepts in probability and statistics, as well as percents, fractions, decimals, and ratios.
Students conduct experiments with number cube, coin, and spinner games to investigate questions such as: Which game gives you a better chance of winning? Why do two students playing the same game get different results? Why might 10 turns yield different results than 100 turns?
This hands-on experience helps students build an understanding of the law of large numbers, randomness, and the relationship between experimental and theoretical probability.
In the final project, students use probability and statistics to design simulations of real-world activities, such as playing a sport or delivering newspapers. Using a variety of data collecting methods, they gather the information needed to determine the probabilities of real-world events, and then figure out how to create simulation games that reflect those probabilities.