August 2, 2000
Today class started with Jon and the students talking about rational numbers and pi. Jon the briefly went over how today's class was going to run. After Jon finished, Kirstin taught class. Kirstin then handed out circles to all of the students. Each student was assigned a number of pieces to cut the circle into. Each piece had to be equal. This activity was easier for some because they only had to cut the circle into four pieces whereas others had to cut their circle into sixteen pieces. After everyone had their pieces cut, each person had to tape the triangles side to side to form a polygon. After using Excel to see how accurate the estimation of pi was (using the polygons), Jon began to talk about the Monte Carlo method which is used to come up with a value for pi. Students then used Microsoft Excel to generate random numbers based on the information given to the program to come up with another estimation of pi.
After break Jon allowed the students to play the Racing Game With One Die in which the students compare the probability of different outcomes. The game is played by rolling one die to determine which player moves forward in the race. Each car is assigned a set of numbers and each time one of the car's numbers is rolled, the car moves forward. The first car to reach the finish line is declared the winner. The students' objective is to experiment with changing the parameters and then compare the resulting probability that a particular car will win.