Jim Propp’s August 2017 blog post is absolutely terrific:
Prof. Engel’s Marvelously Improbably Machines
Even though we are visiting my parents in Omaha, I couldn’t resist having the boys watch the video in the essay and then play with the challenge problem.
Here’s what they thought after watching the video – the nice thing is that they were able to understand the problem Propp was discussing [also, I shot these videos with my phone, so they probably don’t have quote the quality or stability of our usual math videos]:
Next I had them play the game that Propp explained in his video. The idea here was to make sure that they understood how the [amazing!] solution to the problem shown in the video:
Next we tried the challenge problem from the essay. I almost didn’t do this part of the project, but I’m glad I did. It turned out that there were a few ideas in the Propp’s video that the boys thought they understood but there was a bit more explanation required. Once they got past those small stumbling blocks, they were able to solve the problem.
I’m really excited to dive a little deeper into the method of solving probability problems that Propp explains in his essay. What makes me the most excited is that the method came from someone thinking about how to explain probability to kids.
The last video shows that understanding Engel’s method does take a little time. Once kids get the general idea, though, I think they’ll find that applying to a wide variety of problems is pretty easy. It is amazing how such a simple method can made fairly complex probability problems accessible to kids.
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