Sam, Pam, Ken and Jen are exchanging gifts for the holiday. Each name is written on a slip of paper and placed in a bowl. Sam is the first to randomly select a name from the bowl. What is the...
In 1998, Nkem Chukwu gave birth to the first set of surviving octuplets. The eight babies weighed from 11.3 ounces to 28.6 ounces at birth. Leonard Weisman, the Texas Children’s Hospital’s chief of...
Here is a table showing the number of tiles on which each letter appears in a standard English Scrabble game. Note that the blank tiles can be used as any letter a player wants. Jennifer and Pete are...
The Iditarod sled-dog race is run on a trail that was originally a mail-supply route. In 1925, part of the trail became a lifesaving highway for the children who lived in Nome. The Iditarod is...
This plan will help Mathletes to develop a strategic approach to counting the occurrences of a certain shape in a more complex figure made of multiple intersecting lines.
This plan builds on what Mathletes already know about ratios to introduce the definition of probability as a ratio of desired outcomes to total outcomes. Mathletes will then practice calculating the...
Explore combinatorics by looking at a common type of MATHCOUNTS counting problem – counting paths between two points. End with an extension that connects counting paths to another type of combinatoric...
This plan will introduce Mathletes to The Fundamental Counting Principle – a faster method to determining the total number of possible outcomes of an event without listing them all out!