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Fun and learning combined, Carnival Style!

After the AP exam, students from AP Statistics were tasked with creating games of chance that would be appealing and appear 'fair' to players, but in reality favored the house.

The game needed to include at least three outcomes, a conditional probability situation, and have a negative expected value. Once students developed the game, they had to complete a probability packet with discrete random variable tables, expected value, tree diagrams, and binomial and geometric calculations.

On carnival day, more than 100 students visited the carnival during lunch to play the games. They were given 20 tokens and asked to play at least four different games. After playing, the participants voted on their favorite game and traded any tokens won for various prizes. The AP Statistics students were awarded points based on how participants voted for their favorites. Points went to the game creator as well, if they earned the highest token count at the end of the event.

When the carnival was over, the students went to work on writing a final reflection discussing the growth of their project from initial concept to final execution, pros and cons of their game, and how well their theoretical probabilities matched the actual event.