Hot Estimates

A Maths Starter of The Day

Estimate the number of chillies in this picture:

 

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Keywords: Starter | Estimating

"A fab starter, just out of interest is there an exact answer?"

L Khaira, Letchworth
Tuesday, February 06, 2007

 

"It would be nice to have the answers to the questions. I'm sure you know as teacher, we have enough on our plate, let alone having to go and find the answers to resources.
However, i must say, having these resources are fab!"

Miss P, London
Wednesday, February 07, 2007

 

"Would anyone like to volunteer to work out an exact answer? Or better still a range of acceptable answers and a good strategy or two?"

Transum,
Wednesday, February 07, 2007

 

"We got an answer of 700 by projecting on to Smart board making a rectangle which covered 1/35 th of the whole and finding the average number of chillis in the rectangle when randomly placed.
Tom and Year 8 at Ecclesbourne"

Tom, Ecclesbourne
Wednesday, February 07, 2007

 

"Sorry done it again with Year 12 and using more samples got a mean of 16 therefore 16 X 35 = 560, probably a more accurate estimate.
This is an excellent starter, thank you"

Tom, Ecclesbourne
Wednesday, February 07, 2007

 

"We split it into 64 rectangles. We then made a random sample of 8 of the rectangles, finding a mean of 13.5.
So 64 x 13.5 = 864 !!!!!!!!

(y10 stats group)"

Strattttty, John Flamsteed, Derbyshire
Tuesday, February 27, 2007

 

"We divided it into 24 boxes. Counted the number in three boxes and then multiplied it by 8, it gave us 640!"

Top Maths Class!, Withins
Thursday, February 07, 2008

 

"We are a group of year 8 students from Royal Alexandra and Albert School in Surrey and are desperate to know how many chillies are in the picture. Please put us out of our misery!!! We reckon there are about 763."

, RAAS
Tuesday, February 26, 2008

 

"Trick question! One green chilli, one parsnip and the rest are carrots. So the answer is one."

Top set year 10, Ludlow
Friday, March 07, 2008

 

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Not for me! I wouldn't use this type of activity.

This starter has scored a mean of 3.3 out of 5 based on 63 votes.
 

  

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Teacher, do your students have one to one access to computers?

Whether your students each have a TabletPC or share a desktop PC, this activity lends itself to eLearning (Engaged Learning).

Students could collect everyone's estimates in a spreadsheet.

Use this data to calculate the median estimate. The student whose estimate is closest to the median wins a chilli.