Exploring Probability with Dreidels

In December we did a probability study with dreidels. We talked about the tops used for the traditional Hanukkah game of dreidel and what we would expect with a fair dreidel. Students said that each of the four sides should have an equal chance of coming up. One student calculated that if you spun a dreidel 100 times, it should land on each letter about 25 times.

In our study we compared plastic and wooden dreidels to see if one kind was more consistently fair than the other. Students spun the dreidels in class and at home for homework. In the hectic times leading up to Winter Break, we did not get all of our data entered into our spreadsheets. In January each student recorded results in spreadsheets on a classroom computer. We then viewed the results in a pie chart and as a bar graph. We speculated about why one side might come up more often than the others. Students thought about how they were made, about whether the letters were painted on or were on the side in relief, and about how the dreidel behaves when it is spun. I shared that to get an accurate picture we needed to have a lot of spins. We ended up with about 700 spins on plastic dreidels and over 900 with wooden dreidels. Here are our results: