This is a quick post to talk about the three-act lesson from Mathalicious on bracketology, which you can find here. I have not used a lesson from Mathalicious before, but I will be sure to. It's all set up for teacher use, and it really brought up some good discussion with my Honors Problem-Solving class, such as, what's the probability of guessing a bracket? Is it better to guess by flipping a coin or by actual picking? Is Warren Buffet's 1 billion dollar prize for the perfect bracket possible? Is it probable? What are some scoring systems that work or don't work?
For someone who knows nothing about the NCAA (sadly), I learned a lot today. We had fun talking about it, and the online version was really cool in terms of visualizing the 63 games.
I have never picked a bracket before, but it was interesting to go through and pick one with students. Next time I do think we should do it by flipping a coin, just to see how it goes. This time, I picked the bracket with students through The Skimm and everyone got into it. It was definitely fun to do as we were wrapping up our probability unit.
Mathalicious has many more lessons that I will look at and use...some you have to pay for a membership, but it looks like there is a lot of work put into it, which allows you, the teacher, more time for class discussion and less time for preparation. How awesome is that?
That a great idea
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