UW Math 497 Autumn 2002; Th 4:30-6:50


Probability In and Out of the Classroom

Instructor: Virginia Warfield

Department of Mathematics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA


There are many reasons to applaud the recent reappearance of Probability in the elementary and secondary curricula. In this course we will focus on two of them.

The first is that the field is full of problems which can generate a lot of thinking and discussion with a very small amount of mathematical hardware. The second is that most aspects of real life are, in fact, probabilistic rather than deterministic (for instance one's arrival time in any situation involving Seattle traffic.)

On the other hand, getting students to make the connection from classroom to real life can be a major challenge. We will discuss some existing tactics and see if we can come up with some more..

For more information send e-mail to < warfield@math.washington.edu>.


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