Adapting to Remote Learning – Egg Roulette

This is the first in what will likely be a series of posts about classroom moves which I have adapted for remote learning. I hope you enjoy them!

In my freshman-year Prob/Stat course, students experience a probability lesson featuring the game “Egg Roulette”, based on a bit from Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show. Here is a summary of the “live” lesson: https://mathcoachblog.com/2015/09/20/an-egg-cellent-simulation/. This year, there were two considerations for how I would have students investigate the game: conducting the simulation and collecting the results.

CONDUCTING THE SIMULATION

The first class simulation involves two unsuspecting volunteers and my actual container of 12 “eggs” – filled with little fuzzballs. Click the link in the last paragraph to see a video of how it works. In the main simulation, students use decks of cards to play the game repeatedly. Give pairs of students 13 cards all of the same suit. Discard the ace. Then, the 10, jack, queen and king represent “raw” eggs. The other cards represent the “hard-boiled” eggs. In a remote environment I could have used a site like random.org to draw cards, but I also saw an opportunity to build a simulation students could use to quickly analyze repeatedly. This Desmos link allows students to play the many times: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/2b7f6p4r3o. Click the “rerandomize” button to generate repeated plays of the game. Online, we talked through a few of the simulations and I found the students quickly understood the format.

COLLECTING THE RESULTS

I have used a number of methods for collecting class results over the year: sticky dots on a poster, Post-It Notes on a wall, digital data collection. Clearly this year we had to go digital, and the site http://stapplet.com came to the rescue. New this year, teachers have a “collaborative” option – this feature generates a class code from which students can submit their data to the class (thanks Josh Tabor and Luke Wilcox!). The results update in real time. Each student then pasted the class graph into OneNote and a discussion of Jimmy Fallon’s “meanness” – is he being nice to his guests by letting them draw first? – followed.

The rest of the lesson and discussion felt similar to previous years. I challenge small groups to find the probability of a player losing in round 3. This leads us to probability ideas of independence / dependence and the multiplication rule. The engagement remained high and the conversation was on par with previous years!