We are very pleased to award Townsend School a grant to bring in the Think Maths team for a full day of student workshops on Freaky Probability.
We are always very keen to help effective learning in any subject by supporting projects that “help your pupils learn and use any knowledge or skill more quickly, thoroughly, easily, enjoyably, deeply and/or permanently.” (see Focus Areas on our website). We think that bringing in outside experts for workshops and/or staff training is an excellent way to achieve this.
As Tim Richardson, Head of Maths, quoted in his application:
“Humans are generally bad at intuitively understanding probability - not because they don't understand maths, but because it's often counter-intuitive.
Through a series of examples including audience games, students will discover that the chances are not always what we might imagine. This session will help students to use their maths skills to predict and understand the outcomes of games and real-life scenarios.”
Tim went on to add that the sessions would… “promote a greater enjoyment and appreciation of Mathematics and increase their understanding of the concept of probability. As mentioned above this can be a problem for many students and it has been particularly highlighted with our students at Townsend.”