Theoretical Probability with Dreidels

Middle School students in Mrs. Baronofsky's math class learned about probability while playing dreidel. The main part of the lesson involves the students playing dreidel and recording the results of all spins for their group. Having three groups of students provided wonderful variability in the data. It was fascinating to see how one group had a low yield of gimmels while another had a high yield, which gets into the heart of randomness and variability.

Mrs. Baronofsky reinforced equivalent fractions and estimation by asking students to identify which results were close to 25% and which were not. Using this data, Mrs. Baronofsky covered how to find multiple events using a tree diagram and a table.