#407. Guess the Card -Probability

Mathematics, level: Elementary
Posted Sun Nov 12 14:22:23 PST 2000 by Paul Brennan (paulmichaelbrennan).
Taylor, Pa.
Materials Required: Plain paper, pencils or crayons, a deck of cards
Activity Time: 15-20 minutes
Concepts Taught: Probability, graphing

Materials Needed: sheets of plain paper, pencils, 6 cards (2 -3's, 2-7's, and 2-aces), and automatic card shuffler. (You can shuffle manually and use any cards as long as you have 3 pairs.

Activity: Guess the Card
Pass out paper. Have the desks in a circle with the teacher desk in the middle, or U-shaped. Explain that there are a pair of 3's, a pair of 7's, and a pair of aces in the deck. Have your students calculate the probability of the odds of each card being selected. Try and see what happens.
You may want to use different cards so that there is something different then just three pairs. Then have them calculate the probability of the new set of cards. Reflect as a group on what happened.

Pennsylvania Standard: 2.7.5 (E)