What’s the probability of rolling a certain number on a six-sided die?
If you said one in six, you’d be correct — that is unless you’re using Denise Gregory’s special die. Then the odds rise to about 100 percent since the same number is on every side. But don’t let anyone know, at least not until she has tricked the participants in “The Mathematics of Games Shows” class at one of ASMSA’s weekend Science and Engineering Institutes to give the wrong answer.
Gregory, a math instructor at ASMSA, uses the die to help teach the participants about math probabilities and how they factor into game shows. She and her husband, Bob, ASMSA’s interim dean of academic affairs and a fellow math instructor, inform the students how math is incorporated in popular game shows, from “Deal or No Deal” to “Let’s Make A Deal” to “The Price is Right.”
To help illustrate the concept, the couple leads the class in a game of “Skunk.” To play the game, a pair of dice is rolled. Any number except a one is good. Players add up the numbers and choose whether to stay in the game and try to add to their total or stay put. There are five rounds, one for each letter of the word. If students stay in a round and a one is rolled, they lose their accumulated points for that round and that round is over. If double ones are rolled, all those who are still active in that round lose their points for each round played so far.
The students must decide if the risk is worth the reward by staying active. What is the probability that a one will be rolled the next round? What about two ones?
It is just one of the classes the Gregorys teach during the Science and Engineering Institutes. Several other ASMSA instructors also share their knowledge of math, science and language at the institutes with students in the sixth through 10th grades.
Bob Gregory said one of the best aspects of the institutes is that it’s ungraded learning. There are no quizzes or tests or grades to worry about. The students are there because they want to be.
“The kids are choosing to get up on a Saturday morning to come and learn something,” he said. “When you have a group of kids who have chosen to get up and come, you’re going to get kids who want to learn. When you have something to share, there’s an excitement and an enthusiasm you get from the kids that’s easy to project back to them.
“Yes, I could be laying in my pajamas under a cover on the couch, but this is fun. This is a reason to put on your shoes, go out in the rain and see a bunch of kids that want to learn.”
Dr. Patrycja Krakowiak, who often teaches biology related courses at SEI, echoed Gregory’s thoughts. She said seeing how the students react to what they learn in the classes.
“I love to see the excitement in young students’ eyes when they are exposed to often very complicated information and the latest research,” she said. “In their home schools, they’re not usually doing a lot of hands-on experimentation at that level. Sometimes people will say they’re too young to understand, but it’s really amazing the level of understanding you actually achieve when it’s something interesting. They want to know. They want to find out, and so they’ll put the extra effort into gaining that understanding and knowledge.”
Krakowiak said the variety of topics leads students to coming back for more classes. She said her own daughters have attended sessions and asked when the next one will be held. One of her daughters plays in the Arkansas Youth Symphony. She attended a class taught by Dr. Brian Monson, the science department chair, that explained the physics behind how music and instruments work.
“It was very enlightening. Things she didn’t think she could understand she understood. I think that’s the power of SEI — students learning things they didn’t think they could learn,” Krakowiak said.
This is the second year the monthly SEIs have been held on campus. Last year, the program was sponsored through a grant from The Ross Foundation in Arkadelphia. With the success of the program, the decision was made for the school to fund the program this year.
That success also led the school to consider variations of the program. The first variation of the class was SEI+, in which students participated in one class over three separate weekends.
Bob Gregory taught a class about chaos theory in his extended class. The SEI+ class he taught was an extension of one of the monthly SEI classes he teaches, “The Art of Fractals.” A normal session at the monthly SEIs lasts about 90 minutes. The SEI+ class gave him the opportunity to expand the class to three sessions that lasted almost three hours each. That extended time provided him the opportunity to do more in a relaxed manner in the course.
“We meandered around a little bit. We wrote some programs that we wouldn’t have been able to do in a regular session. We could change thresholds and see the changes. We would try to do a model of what a mathematician would do, start off with simple things and add complexity as we go,” he said.
The second variation is SEI@, in which the school takes the program on the road to various areas of the state. The trips, which will visit Conway, Fayetteville, Pine Bluff and Monticello, are sponsored by a grant from the Arkansas Community Foundation.
The first road session was held at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro in October. More than 60 students from Northeast Arkansas as well as several teachers attended the session. Physics instructor Shane Thompson taught a class in which students built a rocket out of a two-liter soda bottle. He said the road sessions have several benefits, one of the most important being that the school is fulfilling one of its mandated missions of outreach to students and teachers around the state.
Bringing the SEI@ to those areas to allow students who may not be able to travel to Hot Springs is important, Thompson said. It also gives teachers the opportunity to learn some activities they can replicate at their school.
“It gives them ideas that they can do in their classrooms that with a little bit of effort they can do just as well as I can,” Thompson said.
He said at the end of the sessions students asked when ASMSA would be returning for more classes. When they were told it may not be until next year, many of them were disappointed it would be so long but that they wanted more, he said.
ASMSA held two other programs similar to SEI this year as well. In September, ASMSA presented Destination Mars at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock. Students planned a manned mission to Mars, including building a ship, a landing pod and a filtration system. The landing pods had to be able to hold an uncooked egg. The pods, including an egg, were then dropped about 20 feet to see if the eggs were unbroken after it landed.
Destination Mars was made possible through a grant from the NASA Summer of Innovation program.
Most recently, the school held ASMSA Humanities Day: Language and International Culture. Students participated in two sessions, one focusing on Spanish and the other on Mandarin Chinese.
In the Spanish class, students learned traditional greetings, played a game that introduced them to Spanish and made a buffet of different foods popular in Latino countries. In the Chinese class, students created their own Chinese name and learned to write it in calligraphy.
Bob Gregory said he has seen many students return to take classes in the different programs. He is also seeing some of those students starting to participate in the school’s shadowing program and applying for admission to the school.
“Personally, it’s fun to see how they change over time. The first time they’re in my class and interact with me is different than the second time. … There is a value to the institution in engaging those kids. It’s getting them excited about coming here,” he said.
This story is featured in the Tangents Fall 2013 issue.