The article asks about the minimal number of persons required for achieving a probability 1/2 that (a.) At least two share a birthday, (b.) At least one shares the reader's birthday. A basic question about the necessary number of checks underlies both problems.

Trading cards for various sports and a range of other subjects such as architecture, animals, hobbies, and war have been in existence since the late nineteenth century and still enjoy great popularity. Two of the most prominent examples are baseball cards in the U.S. and football cards in Europe. Three strategies for collecting European football…

Understanding the roles of random selection and random assignment in experimental design is a central learning objective in most introductory statistics courses. This article describes an activity, appropriate for a high school or introductory statistics course, designed to teach the concepts, values and pitfalls of random selection and assignment…

This article explores an example in finances in order to motivate the random variable learning to the very beginners in statistics. In addition, it offers a relationship between standard deviation and range in a very specific situation.

This article describes how practice problems for the actuarial examination in probability can be used to encourage active, collaborative learning. (Contains 1 table.)

Real-world phenomena simulation models, which can be used to engage middle-school students with probability, are described. Links to R instructional material and easy-to-use code are provided to facilitate implementation in the classroom.

Assuming a coin is fair is common place in introductory statistical education. This article offers three approaches to test if a coin is fair. The approaches lend themselves to straightforward simulation studies that can enrich student understanding of joint probability and sample size requirements. Simulation studies comparing the relative merits…

Two contestants debate the notorious probability problem of the sex of the second child. The conclusions boil down to explication of the underlying scenarios and assumptions. Basic principles of probability theory are highlighted.

This paper deals with the analysis of cricket match results from the ICC World Cup 2011. We believe that such data provide good material for interesting classroom exercises. (Contains 7 tables and 1 figure.)

We establish an interesting connection between the number of runs and the length of the first run when tossing a fair coin.

The unexpectedness of the birthday problem has long been used by teachers of statistics in discussing basic probability calculation. An activity is described that engages students in understanding probability and sampling using the popular Facebook social networking site. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)

In introductory statistics courses, the concept of power is usually presented in the context of testing hypotheses about the population mean. We instead propose an exercise that uses a binomial probability table to introduce the idea of power in the context of testing a population proportion. (Contains 2 tables, and 2 figures.)

We consider three examples from our own teaching in which much was learned by critically examining examples from books. Even influential and well-regarded books can have examples where more can be learned with a small amount of additional effort. (Contains 3 figures.)

Developing statistical literacy for older school students includes recognizing and interpreting conditional statements in the media. Data on couples' success in predicting whether their partners have cheated provides a motivating context for teachers to lead their students through this process.

This article advocates biased spinners as an engaging context for statistics students. Calculating the probability of a biased spinner landing on a particular side makes valuable connections between probability and other areas of mathematics. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)