4/2/2023 0 Comments Pig dice club![]() ![]() ![]() Hence, for a play to be worthwhile, we need (19-N)/6 (and thus 19-N) to be positive. But the remaining sixth of the time, we’ll hit a two and lose everything this can be thought of as a ‘gain’ of minus N. So five sixths of the time, we gain some amount. One sixth of the time, a one will be thrown in the next round, leading to a gain of 1 with equal probability we might gain 3,4,5, or 6. Obviously, it’s only worth playing if our expected increase in the total offsets the risk of losing it all. To model this game, we can consider the expectation of a round- that is, the average outcome in the long run. It’s interesting to watch how strategies adapt as the players get more experience- particularly if the two is thrown surprisingly early or late in a game (we hit a total in the 70s for one session, which skewed things somewhat!)Ĭan we say anything mathematically about when a player should sit down? That is, should we gamble a given total or not? You might want to think about this yourself before reading on. To make sure this isn’t due to misunderstanding the game, it’s worth doing a practice run first. ![]() Some children are very risk adverse, and sit down almost immediately others just stay standing until they get knocked out by a two. Perhaps give each student a piece of paper and a pen to write their score on (nice and large!) to hold up once they’ve sat down. It’s definitely worth keeping a running tally of throws and totals on the blackboard -with the students doing the adding up! For smaller groups, you might be able to give out tokens or numbered cards as players save their score, but with larger groups (we had around 30 students per session) this would probably slow things down a lot. Recording scores of players as they drop out is harder, but vital- children may try to cheat, or accuse each other of doing so, when it comes to declaring their final total. Apart from making it easy to spot when a player is trying to sneak back into the game, this is also good as it gives the students an idea of how confident their peers are to continue, and you’ll get lots of them wavering up and down as they try to decide! Keeping track of who’s in or out is most easily done by having students stand up if they wish to gamble or sit down if they wish to stick with their score. The winners of the game are the players with the highest score it’s worth playing around three games and taking a combined total. Play proceeds until all participants have decided to keep their score, or a two eliminates all remaining players. ![]() To play a round, roll a die each player who is still in adds that many points to their score- unless a two is thrown, in which case they lose all their points. Before each round, players decide whether to stick with their current score, or continue playing. How to PlayĪ pair of dice are thrown, and their total recorded as a starting score for all participants. For older students, it could provide the starting point for a discussion of topics such as the gambler’s fallacy or for a statistical investigation. I used it recently as a warm-up activity for a maths hour with local primary school children (around 11 years old), where it was well-received. Greedy pig is a simple maths game for groups that serves as an introduction to probability. This entry first appeared as a writeup for Everything2. ![]()
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