The chances of something happening are given by the following: Well, we need to know what things can happen and what things we would like to happen. First of all, how do we find probabilities. This by itself is not too difficult but needs a small lead in. What are our chances of landing on the snake on square 43? How about the chances of landing on the ladder? Or of missing both of them? Playing Snakes and Ladders, we’ve landed on square 41. If you are going to do all three you may want to do them in that order. On reflection Snakes and Ladders is most likely the easiest, Monopoly is a little more difficult and Lotto is the hardest. There are two other staff room meeting suggestions for probability. In that case you may need to change the problem slightly to make things fit your Board. If you do, you’ll probably find that there won’t be a snake or a ladder just where I have placed them in the diagram. You might find it useful to have a Snakes and Ladders Board handy. Leave something up your sleeve if you want to or add a problem from a different dice game or give them some homework. There is no need to go as far as we have done here.
At the end (section 9), there are some OHTs for you to copy if you think that they might help. Finally we suggest an approach that you might take in the staff room discussion (section 8). In section 7 we reflect on what we’ve done. This leads us to looking at the ladder situation in section 6. Then, in section 5 we are able to use spinners to resolve the matter as far as the snake is concerned.
In section 4 we look to spinners to try to understand what is going on. This leads us into a contradiction with two different answers being given for the probability of the same event. Then we see that there might be a more relevant question if you are actually playing snakes and ladders (section 3). First we pose and answer the straightforward problems relating to one throw of a dice (section 2).