Probability? Go Fish!

Photo by DarrellR

We began our lesson on Probability with a fun exercise called Healthy Fish. The required supplies were quite simple: multi-colored Goldfish, a bag (unless you buy the individual packs like my professor did...brilliant!), and a worksheet. We were instructed to dump out our Goldfish on to our desks. We were then told that the green fish were the sick fish, and all remaining colors were healthy fish. Using the worksheet provided, we proceeded to answer probability questions using the fish.

For example, after counting and recording the number of healthy fish, sick fish, and total fish, we were asked to compute the probability that a fish in our sample was sick:

http://openwalls.com/image?id=17768

healthy fish = 5
sick fish = 1
total fish = 6
probability that a fish is sick = 1/6 (sick fish/total fish)







What I loved about this exercise was the addition of a manipulative to the lesson. Something as simple as using Goldfish when teaching probability not only helps students visualize the problems, but it also provides a snack afterwards for anyone who may get hangry (hungry-anger)!

In closing, I will leave you with a few bonuses I found in looking for a picture of multi-colored Goldfish to add to this post. The post Measurement & Data – Activities Using Food that discusses the use of food not only for Math, but also Reading (I also used DarrellR's photo above). Also, the blog where I found this post is a great Elementary Math Blog; I even added it to my Blogroll!

-Amanda