Teaching probability

by Jenny Gage and David Spiegelhalter

The material on this site supports Teaching Probabiity, published by Cambridge University Press in the Cambridge Mathematics series.

For comments and queries, please contact educs@cambridge.org .

Part 1

• Colour versions of spinners (png files)
• Greyscale versions of spinners (png files)
• Spreadsheet for editing or creating new spinners (Excel file)

Some worksheets are provided here in colour and greyscale versions, in Word and pdf formats.  You can adapt them for your own class.

Chapter 4: Fair Game?

• Game 1: Worksheets in Colour (Word,  pdf), Greyscale (Word,  pdf)
• Game 2: Worksheets in Colour (Word,  pdf), Greyscale (Word,  pdf)
• Game 3: Worksheets in Colour (Word,  pdf), Greyscale (Word,  pdf)
• Game 4: Worksheets in Colour (Word,  pdf), Greyscale (Word,  pdf)
• Game 5: Worksheets in Colour (Word,  pdf), Greyscale (Word,  pdf)

Chapter 5: Which team will win?

• Season 1: Worksheets in Colour (Word,  pdf), Greyscale (Word,  pdf)
• Season 2: Worksheets in Colour (Word,  pdf), Greyscale (Word,  pdf)

Chapter 6: The dog ate my homework

• Class X: Worksheets in Colour (Word,  pdf), Greyscale (Word,  pdf)
• Class Y: Worksheets in Colour (Word,  pdf), Greyscale (Word,  pdf)

Part 4

Spreadsheet: containing all spreadsheets for Part 4

Chapter 20: What's the best strategy?

• Worksheet: spinners for games (Word, pdf)

Chapter 21: What does 'random' look like?

• Worksheet: real or fake sequences? (Word, pdf)
• Worksheet: random patterns? (Word, pdf)
• Spreadsheet: match probabilities with 'shuffle', with and without replacement
• Spreadsheet: song titles from 100 albums of 10 songs each

Chapter 23: How probable is probable?

• Worksheet:  paragraph with uncertainty words (Word, pdf)

Chapter 25: Heads or Tails, boy or girl?

• Worksheets:  Heads or tails? (Word, pdf)
• Spreadsheet: Pascal’s triangle and probability of getting x heads in n flips 
• Animation: lightning - 20 random left-or-right forks

Chapter 27: It's a lottery

• Spreadsheet: Lotteries, chances of getting jackpot and other numbers right.
• Spreadsheet: lottery analogies: flipping coins, throwing dice, grains of rice.

Chapter 31: Happy birthday to you, and you, and ..

• Spreadsheet: birthday matches in group.
• Spreadsheet: someone matches YOUR birthday
• Spreadsheet: number needed for 'close' birthday match

Chapter 32: How long do I have to wait?

• Spreadsheet: waiting times for a head or any other probability

Chapter 33: Do you know what you don’t know?

• Worksheet: for quiz (Word, pdf)