Course summary
In this video, David Spiegelhalter and Jenny Gage summarise the course. What aspects of the course will have the greatest impact on your teaching? Would you like to suggest any …
Course: Teaching Probability
Bayes’ theorem
Bayes’ theorem is one of the most useful results in probability, and (among other things), enables us to adjust our estimate of the probability of an event in the light …
Two non-independent events
When events are not independent, we need to take into account ‘what has already happened’ when deciding what value of probability to use for subsequent events. More formally, we can …
Independent but non-identical events
In this and the next two steps, we will complete our learning journey by presenting examples of more complex problems in probability. This step will continue our work from the …
Independence
Our next examination topic is independence. This is an area which causes some difficulty, and we will start with simple examples and build up to more complex situations over a …
How to Use a Spreadsheet to Model a Probability Experiment
The spreadsheet is built up in seven stages, corresponding to the seven individual sheets in the file. Each one of these builds on the stage before. Each of the stages …
Expectation and Experiments
In this step, we continue our exploration of examination topics in probability. Our next topics are: Expectation Estimating probabilities from experiments Our approach for these topics will be a little …
Probability, sets, and Venn diagrams
In this step, we review a further selection of related topics in probability, and provide sample examination-style questions for you to try. This step covers: Using complements Mutually exclusive and …
Using the probability scale
In this step we provide three examples of examination-type questions based on the topics that we looked at in the previous step. All of this week’s sample questions are intended …
The Probability Scale
We will start by looking at some of the simpler topics that are typically covered in examinations and assessments: The probability scale Determining probability using equally likely outcomes Understanding fixed …
Week 3 introduction
In the first two weeks of this course on teaching probability, we have introduced teaching approaches and methods that we have used successfully in a wide variety of schools. Our …
Week 2 summary
Congratulations on completing Week 2 of this course! Next week, we will be focussing on preparing students for examinations. We know that teachers are often under great pressure to get …
Selecting an activity
As we did in Week 1, we are going to finish this week by asking you to plan, teach and report back on a teaching activity, this time involving conditional …
Two-way tables
Two-way tables are another useful way of recording data, and you may well have used one with plastic cubes to gather data from your own ‘Dog ate my homework’ experiment. …
Using Venn Diagrams
We use a variety of representations for both experimental and expected frequencies. We believe that there is no single best way to represent data – different styles of presentation highlight …