Oh, how I love Basketball in March!

      I sit on my couch, watching the last game of what has been an insane weekend of basketball.  I am a college basketball fanatic, and since Thursday I have watched a LOT of basketball.  What a weekend of basketball it has been....I've watched a #1 finally lose to a #16.  I've seen buzzer beaters, 20 point comebacks and 20 point losses by really good teams.

     And as I watch all of this, one of the things that I keep thinking is....I can't wait to talk to the kids about this!  We did a fun simulation of the first round of the tournament, so I think they will get a kick out of the unexpected things that have happened in March 2018.

     The simulation was super easy to set up, and only took about 10 minutes in class.  Plus it was a great way to introduce the idea of  simulations to my class the week before spring break when it was hard to get them to care about anything!

     I based it all on these statistics:

         I used a variety of materials to create simulations for each of the games.  Here was what I used:

• 1 vs. 16--bag of a bunch of colored blocks with just one white block to represent the 16.
• 2 vs. 15--bag of 19 red blocks and 1 blue block to represent the 15.
• 3 vs. 14--rolled a 6-sided die with 5 sides for the 3 and 1 side for the 14
• 4 vs. 13--rolled a 10-sided die with 8 sides for the 4 and 2 sides for the 13
• 5 vs. 12--rolled a 6-sided die with 4 sides for 5 and 2 sides for the 12
• 6 vs. 11--spun a spinner with 5 spaces for 6 and 3 spaces for the 11
• 7 vs. 10--spun a spinner with 3 spaces for the 7 and 2 spaces for the 10
• 8 vs. 9--flipped a coin

Then the kids filled out the form below, and then we simulated the entire first round.  We went through each of the trials listed above 4 times, and I made it clear that students had to have them in the correct order.  I made everyone stand up, and as soon as their bracket was no longer perfect, they had to sit down. In every single hour, every kid was sitting down by the time we got to the 4-13 games!  Click on the picture below to download this form.

     This was really fun.  I know I'll do it again next year.  One thing I think I'll do differently next year is have the KIDS design how to test the simulation.  I will demonstrate how to pick your materials with one of the games, and then assign each table one game to decide how to simulate.  Since each table will only have to come up with 1 part of the simulation, I still think it will be fast.  But since the kids will have to make some decisions about how to set up the simulation, I think they will get more out of it.

     After we finished the simulation, I showed this short 3-minute video explaining the odds of getting a perfect bracket.  The professor in the video does a great job of explaining the math behind why a perfect bracket is so hard to get.