Trick 8: Spooky Maths Magic

Spooky Maths Magic

Requirements; Smart board/data projector.

 This is mental maths, but not hard maths. You can play this video by Marco Frezza  directly to the class.

It may not work on everybody, but it would be very interesting to see how many students are fooled by this spooky magic man.

Trick 9: Coin Trick. How to throw 10 HEADS in a row!!!!

Requirements: A coin for each student & smart board or data projector.

First ask your students to toss a coin 10 times each.

Ask each student how many heads in a row they threw.

Now ask students ‘Do you think it is possible to throw 10 heads in a row?

It can be done. Here is how you do it.

Derren Brown is a UK mentalist, magician, hypnotist and maths guru. He’s awesome. He shows audiences how a lack of understanding maths, especially probability, leads to misinterpreting the facts.

Now play this video to the students:

Trick 10: A Foolproof Gambling System

Math Mentalist Devises Foolproof Gambling System

Requirements: Smart board/Data Projector

or Chalk & Talk

This is the most awesome way to introduce probability.

Mentalist Derren Brown devises a foolproof gambling system. He sends a girl , Kadisha, the number of a winning horse in race to be run the next day. It wins. He sends her the winning horse and race number 4 more times. She ends up with winnings close to £ 1000 before the final race. Derren convinces her to borrow money for the last bet. She does. She places £4,000 on a horse. Did it win?????

Watch Part 5 of The System

 

 

If you are not convinced Derren Brown can come up with a foolproof system for horse race tipping, let me explain The System. He took 7,776 e-mail addresses, divided them into 6 equal groups and sent each group a different number for a horse in a 6 horse race to be run the next day. Naturally, one group of 1296 had been given the winning horse number.  This group was divided into 6 again and given the number of the ‘winning’ in a six horse race the next day and so on.

Race 1: 7776

Race 2: 1296

Race 3: 216

Race 4: 36

Race 5: 6

Out of 7776 punters, only one punter was given in advance five horse race winners in a row. Was it Kadisha. You will have to watch the Youtube above.

You can watch THE SYSTEM in full here. It takes 47 mins.

And the Oscar for Best Mathematical Performance Goes to …..

  ………………………………………..

And the Oscar for Best Mathematical Performance Goes to …..

Ben Zauzmer

Ben Zauzmer, a Harvard Applied Math graduate who has a 75 per cent success rate in predicting the winners of Oscar Awards every year, has correctly predicted 20 of 21 winners in 2018 Oscars, which is a success rate of 95%. 

How does he do it? He gathers thousands of data points on Oscar ceremonies over the past two decades – such as categories movies are nominated in, other award results, and aggregate critic scores – and he uses statistics to calculate how good a predictor each of those metrics is in each Oscar category. Then, he plugs in the numbers and that gives him the % chance that each film will win in each category according to  the Boston Globe.

Ben, who writes for The Hollywood Reporter, uses his mathematical model to produce  Bar Graphs like this:

This year the Best Picture was a close call, but Ben’s Mathematical Prediciton was correct.  

Survival Maths: Close encounters with Sharks

Drone’s Eye View: AWESOME!!!!!

Australia takes it’s sharks very seriously. Shark detecting drones are being trialled on beaches in NSW as a part of the NSW Government’s $16 million Shark Management Strategy. 

The film JAWS has given sharks a bad rap. Here are the STATS:

Deaths by shark attack in the world:

Australia       About 2 a year

USA               1 every 2 years 

UK                  None EVER

CANADA          None EVER

More deaths occur due to falling off chairs in Australia. Quad bikes are deadly anywhere. 

Full Stats and references here.

Meanwhile,  you see a shark fin. You can swim BUT what distance do you need to be from the shark to make it to the beach.

You will find some interesting maths here.

3. If you put the population of the world into Australia what area would we get each?

 

 

The Terrifying Math of Running from a Bear … USA Units

USA UNITS below. METRIC UNITS here.

BEAR STATISTICS

Grizzly Bear

Weight:  550 lb        

Height:  8’ 2”   

Top Speed: 35 mph  =   51 ft/s    

Brown Bear

Weight:  1,500 lb       

Height:  8’ 2”              

Top Speed: 22 mph  =  32 ft/s     

Comparing these speeds to the fastest man on earth, Usain Bolt:

Usain Bolt:

Top speed: 27 mph  =   40 ft/s     

Bears are not dangerous:

………………………………………………………………………

In fact, more Americans die each year from choking on their own vomit than are killed by bears.

More death stats here. 

Nevertheless, bears are very fast. So you can see why Park Rangers offer the following advice:

More information at Mountain Nature.

The reason for waiting until the bear is 15 ft away is to make sure the spray doesn’t disperse in the air. If the Pepper Spray is too spread out it will not stop the bear.

Ref: Dog helps save hikers after grizzly chases them for 20 minutes.