Activity Description Play the Chaos Game by experimenting with probabilities. Learn about an apparently random process with a not-so-random, geometric fractal result.

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The Chaos Game

Place in mathematics curriculum:

• practice students' fraction manipulation skills
• practice students' measurement skills
• practice students' geometric probablility skills
• demonstrate randomness
• motivate the ideas of chaos
• demonstrate fractal objects

This activity allows the user to play several versions of Barnsley's Chaos Game. This activity would work well in groups of two to four for about thirty-five to forty minutes if you use the exploration questions and fifteen minutes otherwise.

Preparations for this activity:

• give implicit directions on what they are to do. For example "Today we are going to see what happens when we play a random game. Here are the rules ..."
• answer the question "Why/how does this pattern occur?"
• discuss chaos, infinity, etc.