If you asked your mum/dad/friend to take you to the park today,
what sort of response might you get?
The class were playing a maths game using interlocking cubes. Can
you help them record what happened?
What can you say about the child who will be first on the playground tomorrow morning at breaktime in your school?
What statements can you make about the car that passes the school
gates at 11am on Monday? How will you come up with statements and
test your ideas?
You'll need to work in a group for this problem. The idea is to
decide, as a group, whether you agree or disagree with each
Try out the lottery that is played in a far-away land. What is the
chance of winning?
Move your counters through this snake of cards and see how far you
can go. Are you surprised by where you end up?
Engage in a little mathematical detective work to see if you can spot the fakes.
Imagine flipping a coin a number of times. Can you work out the
probability you will get a head on at least one of the flips?
Can you work out the probability of winning the Mathsland National
Lottery? Try our simulator to test out your ideas.
Some people offer advice on how to win at games of chance, or how
to influence probability in your favour. Can you decide whether
advice is good or not?
Imagine a room full of people who keep flipping coins until they
get a tail. Will anyone get six heads in a row?
If everyone in your class picked a number from 1 to 225, do you
think any two people would pick the same number?
The NRICH Stage 5 weekly challenges are shorter problems aimed at Post-16 students or enthusiastic younger students. There are 52 of them.
Mathmo is a revision tool for post-16 mathematics. It's great installed as a smartphone app, but it works well in pads and desktops and notebooks too. Give yourself a mathematical workout!
10 starting points for risk vs reward
Invent a set of three dice where each one is better than one of the others?
Explore these X-dice with numbers other than 1 to 6 on their faces.
Which one is best?
Calculate probabilities associated with the Derren Brown coin scam
in which he flipped 10 heads in a row.
Abi and Charlotte showed what good 'pattern sniffers' they are as
they worked on this investigation.
There was some excellent conjecturing, proving and generalising
that went on as you tackled this problem.
We received a variety of good strategies for solving this problem.
Lots of you noticed interesting patterns in the spreadsheet, and
some went on to explain the patterns using algebra.
The beginnings of understanding probability begin much earlier than
you might think...
All you need for this game is a pack of cards. While you play the
game, think about strategies that will increase your chances of
Uncertain about the likelihood of unexpected events? You are not
This article explains how tree diagrams are constructed and helps
you to understand how they can be used to calculate probabilities.
Use this animation to experiment with lotteries. Choose how many
balls to match, how many are in the carousel, and how many draws to
make at once.