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Here are some specific activities, investigations or visual aids we have picked out. Click anywhere in the grey area to access the resource. The options may go beyong the scope of this level of the Functional Skills requirements.

• Probability Video A reminder of how to work out basic probability leading to simple combined events and expected values.
• Probability Basic probability questions in an online exercise.
• Dice Investigation Throw two dice and multiply the scores. Investigate the different products you can obtain. What about adding? What about using three dice?
• Dice Bingo Choose your own numbers for your bingo card. The caller uses two dice and adds the numbers together.
• Tree Diagram Creator Quickly create a probability tree diagram to use as a visual aid.
• Tree Diagrams Video Tree diagrams can be really helpful showing combinations of two or more events in order to calculate probabilities.
• Tree Diagrams Calculate the probability of independent and dependent combined events using tree diagrams.

Here are some exam-style questions on this statement:

• "The midnight train to Georgia is not the most reliable. The probability that the train will be late on any day is 0.35" ... more
• "The table shows the shoe sizes of 35 male teachers." ... more
• "The diagram shows 13 fruit emojis." ... more
• "Near Blizzard Lodge on any day the probability that it snows is \( \frac{1}{4} \)." ... more
• "(a) There are 24 people at a Football Club supporters' meeting in Dudley. Thirteen of them are female." ... more
• "Mrs Gill wants to give her nephew two sweets from a jar she keeps on her kitchen table. There are 11 sweets in this jar." ... more
• "Aran, Betsy and Connor collect data about which way up a drawing pin will land if dropped from a fixed height. Here are their results." ... more
• "There are 1200 pupils at Thailand's largest British International school. 690 of these pupils are girls." ... more
• "For this question, give all your answers as fractions." ... more
• "There are some discarded marker pens in a bin." ... more
• "A box contains only green and yellow crayons." ... more
• "At an international conference there were 300 delegates from both the northern and southern hemispheres. Each delegate wore a t-shirt in one of three different colours:" ... more
• "Lisa's nephew Sean has two boxes containing plastic building bricks." ... more
• "80 students are asked if they like History (\(H\)) and if they like Geography (\(G\))." ... more
• "A monkey comes across a box of red and green apples in the jungle. All of the apples are the same size." ... more
• "Percy throws a fair dice until he gets a five." ... more
• "On the day after one GCSE paper Twitter and the media were buzzing with comments about a particular question about Hannah's sweets. Here is the Transum version of this now famous Maths exam question:" ... more
• "When the arrow is spun once on this spinner, a 1 or a 2 or a 3 can be scored depending on the colour the arrow lands on." ... more
• "There are \(x\) left shoes and 7 right shoes in a dark cupboard." ... more
• "There are only \(b\) blue counters and \(y\) yellow counters in a bag." ... more
• "Julie chooses a cake from a yellow box on a shelf. The box contains two chocolate cakes and three plain cakes. She eats the cake and chooses another one from the box. The tree diagram below represents the situation with the four possible outcomes where C stands for chocolate cake and P for plain cake." ... more
• "Mathsland's national currency comes in denominations of 1 unit, 5 units, 10 units and 50 units. Sofya places this collection of these coins in her purse then, without looking, takes out two coins at random, one after the other." ... more

See all these questions

Here are some Advanced Starters on this statement:

• Best Dice
  Which of the unusual dice would you choose to give you the best chance of winning the prize? more
• How Many Left Handers?
  Work out the number of members if the probability of left-handed members being randomly selected is given. more
• Sorcerer's Apprentices
  The difference between random selection and an 'at least' scenario involving sorcerer's apprentices. more
• Tri-Junction
  A real life situation that can be analysed with the use of a tree diagram. more
• Two Pots
  Use tree diagrams to find the surprising result that probabilities of different situations are the same. more
• What Question?
  Write down all the possible questions that could have been asked if this was the Venn diagram provided in a mathematics exam. more

Click on a topic below for suggested lesson Starters, resources and activities from Transum.

• Probability Probability is a measure of the weight of evidence, and is arrived at through reasoning and inference. In simple terms it is a measure or estimation of likelihood of the occurrence of an event. The word probability comes from the Latin word probabilitas which is a measure of the authority of a witness in a legal case. Some of the earlier mathematical studies of probability were motivated by the desire to be more profitable when gambling. Today however the practical uses of probability theory go far beyond gambling and are used in many aspects of modern life. We believe that even adults can, in many cases, have a poor intuition regarding the effects of probability. These activities are designed to help pupils calculate but also get a 'feel' for the principles of probability.