Probably Not As Smart As I Thought I Was

N's kindergarten teacher let N bring home a dice learning game from school today.  I don't think N quite got whatever the rules for the game were, but he had tons of fun this evening tossing the dice and very seriously and deliberately manipulating the little wooden, numbered flags on the toy after each throw.  Occasionally he would shriek with satifaction and squeal "I won!" though I never saw any rhyme or reason to what he did and never understood his trigger to celebrate.  After a while watching I decided I would inject myself in the name of pedagogy and create a learning moment.

"OK, N, L, we're going to run some experiments.  If we throw one die over and over and count how many times each number comes up, which number do you think will come up most often?"  "Four!"  "Free!"  "Five!"  "Six!"  They had difficulty with commitment.  I made them all sign up to a number then had them initiate the experiment.  N tossed the die over and over, gleefully calling out the count while I tallied the results.  Then L had her turn at the wheel and scores of additional samples were added to the sample space.  After nearly a hundred tosses we closed the experiment and performed our analysis.  Hmmmm...  Not quite what I expected. Seems 6 was a particularly popular number.

Not overly concerned, I upped the ante.  "Now we're going to roll two dice.  What do you think will appear the most often?"  This time we documented our guesses and made everyone take a stand:

• N chose 10
• L chose 12
• Mommy chose 10
• Daddy chose 7

L (I was very pleased to note) very quickly pointed out that no one should chose 1.  Unfortunately her spot-on logic for why she should avoid 1 was not extended to other related concepts that would have spared her some upcoming humiliation.

And the die were cast!

The results were a lot more comfortable from my point of view, though something mysterious seemed to be happening in the upper registers.  (I think N's teacher might be having shady craps games in the teachers' lounge after school.)  At the end of it all L was bitter; Mommy and N were suspicious, and Daddy was smug.

As with all important analytical work, documenting your data sets is critical, so I therefore submit our extensive catalog of original research documentation.