Activity Description Experiment with probability and "fairness" with this simulation where "N" players roll two dice, and the lucky player moves one step toward the finish on each roll. Parameters: the number of players, number of trials, and length of the race.

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Racing Game with Two Dice

Place in mathematics curriculum:

This activity can be used to:

• introduce the notions of chance and probability
• allow students to experiment with probability and the notion of a fair game
• motivate the notion of conditional probability
• motivate the notion of random numbers
• motivate ideas from combinatorics

This activity allows the user to simulate a race game similar to The Racing Game with One Die except that the movement is determined by throwing two dice, making the expected outcome more complicated. This activity would work well in mixed ability groups of two or three for about twenty minutes if you use the exploration questions and ten to fifteen minutes otherwise.

Preparations for this activity:

• give implicit directions on what they are to do. For example "Today we are going to play the racing game. We are going to try to determine the likelihood of the cars winning if they advance when certain numbers are rolled. I want you to figure out how often the red car wins he advances when he advances on one number, two numbers,..., all six numbers on the die..."
• answer the question "What it the cumulative stats button for?"
• discuss experimental probability and theoretical probability.