Experimental Probability Circus "What's in the bag" Random Relative Frequency Experiment Trial

Really fun exercise for many age ranges. Originally I used this as one activity in a "Circus" of many activities which students go around the room playing on. (More of my Circus Activities are uploaded on my resources elsewhere)

Print out the resources enough for each group (I split the class into pairs).
Make up a bag of coloured counters for each pair. I used headphone bags from the music room, but any non see through draw string bag will do.
I used "Multilink" coloured cubes. For ease I gave every pair the same number and colour of cubes in their bags - they each had 1 pink, 3 yellow and six blue cubes. You could easily vary the cubes in each bag.

Have a whole class discussion before you start about what they think will be in the bags (you show them a couple of trials). Reinforce that they will spoil the "game" if they look in the bag (if anyone does look they need to be dealt with quickly in case they share the solution around the room). Then let them play and as time goes on discuss with all the tables about what they think is in the bag. At some point bring it to an end and then get them to start working out an estimate of the probabilities.

Meanwhile collect in everyone's results and display on the Excel spreadsheet on your projection screen. Have a discussion about what's in the bag.

They will be able to make quite a good guess about how many cubes are in the bag and should be able to come up with the ratios of each colour. It's quite fun at the early stages when some tables don't pull out a particular colour which everyone else has.

There are two versions of the tally table. You can decide whether to let them know what colours are possibly in or not tell them.. it may then be possible for one colour which they have to never appear in their trial.

The spreadsheet has got the results from my lesson however like all the files they all can easily be adapted for your own learners.
Enjoy