Hot Estimates

A Maths Starter of The Day

Estimate the number of chillies in this picture:

Chillies

 

 

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Keywords: Starter | Estimating

  • L Khaira, Letchworth
  • Tuesday, February 06, 2007
  • "A fab starter, just out of interest is there an exact answer?"
  • Miss P, London
  • Wednesday, February 07, 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!"
  • Transum,
  • 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?"
  • Tom, Ecclesbourne
  • 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"
  •  

  • Strattttty, John Flamsteed, Derbyshire
  • Tuesday, February 27, 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)"
  • Top Maths Class!, Withins
  • Thursday, February 07, 2008
  • "We divided it into 24 boxes. Counted the number in three boxes and then multiplied it by 8, it gave us 640!"
  • , RAAS
  • Tuesday, February 26, 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."
  • Top set year 10, Ludlow
  • Friday, March 07, 2008
  • "Trick question! One green chilli, one parsnip and the rest are carrots. So the answer is one."
  • N M, EHS
  • Monday, February 09, 2009
  • "S2 Maths Class do not like this question as there is no exact answer!"
  • Jon O'Neill, Brixham
  • Wednesday, February 11, 2009
  • "My expert year 10 set 7 maths class have divided the picture to find 1/25th. which gave us a mean of 19. so we think there is 475.

    (what stays hot in the fridge? a Chilli!!!!)"
  • Ross Roberton, International School Of Luxembourg
  • Wednesday, April 29, 2009
  • "Our class calculated a Mean of 428.3 on our first guess. After a longer time considering stragies, our second guess produced a mean of 733.3.
    We are still waiting/hoping someone is going to count them for an exact answer!
    Grade 9, Luxembourg."
  • Mystery Man, Seaford College
  • Wednesday, February 03, 2010
  • "I divided the squares equally into 24 squares and then I chose a box that was representative and tried to count them.I got the number 37 and then x it by 24 to give me 888."
  • Mrs J.Thompson, London
  • Wednesday, February 03, 2010
  • "We have enough on our plates as teachers and some of the students don't belive us so their should be some answers."
  • Miss Deans S1's, Carnoustie High School
  • Thursday, February 04, 2010
  • "Great starter. Our answer was 665 chillies in the picture.
    We thought that the starter got our brains thinking and Innes thought it was a piece of chilli cake!
    Ryan was the closest with 698."
  • Miss Hill, Year 9
  • Monday, February 08, 2010
  • "Josh and Ben had a go at this while waiting for the rest of the class. They split it into 16 boxes, but when reading the comments, they agreed that doing a few boxes then averaging would make it more accurate. A good starter for getting conversations started brains thinking.
    We thought just over 500!"
  • Mrs Sinclair's Year 8, St Bede's, Ormskirk
  • Monday, February 08, 2010
  • "Another great Starter of the Day. My Year 8 really love your puzzles! We averaged 681 with 19 pupils. Rebekah thought it was 1 big one zoomed in to look like lots of little ones."
  • Oliver, Star Primary School
  • Wednesday, March 24, 2010
  • "I loved this starter!!!! Our class copied and pasted the picture on to our smart board. We then circled each pepper and came with the awnser of 650!!!"
  • Grade 7, International School Of Bearn
  • Monday, February 07, 2011
  • "We divided the picture in 64 rectangles and counted about 11 chillies in each of them. Our estimate is then 64 times 11 = 704 chillies!"
  • Mr Lewis, Aston Fields Middle School
  • Monday, February 07, 2011
  • "We think there might be over a thousand chillies!"
  • Year 11, Welshpool High School Powys
  • Monday, February 07, 2011
  • "Jordan and Spencer split the white board into 10cm squares. One square had 23 chillies. They reckoned there were 48 squares on the whiteboard. 48 x 23 = 1104. Sorted! Oh and one green one."
  • Miss H And Co!, BMS
  • Monday, February 07, 2011
  • "You're all wrong! We divided the picture into 30 even rectangles. We calculated the mean number of chilli's with a sample of 4 squares. We then multiplied this by 30. We got 660!!"
  • 7K2y, Kettlethorpe High School
  • Monday, February 07, 2011
  • "Our answers ranged from 309 to 2122!! What is the correct solution please?"
  • Lea Beadoux, Cavendish Close Junior School
  • Monday, February 07, 2011
  • "There is only 1 green one. Has anybody noticed that."
  • P. Shouksmith, St. Andrew's School
  • Tuesday, February 08, 2011
  • "We think there are 692 by splitting the area into 40 rectangles and then averaging the number in each rectangle."
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  • Year 7, Welshpool High School Powys
  • Tuesday, February 08, 2011
  • "Daniel measured the length and width of the rectangle. Times the answers. They measured 1 chillie as 10 cm then divided and got an answer of 494. Sammie & Rebecca drew 10 cm squares and counted 16 & 14. they reckoned 48 squares. timesed and got 720."
  • Year 8, Welshpool High School
  • Tuesday, February 08, 2011
  • "We had lots of guesses from 1 to 999. Kate drew a 10 cm square and Charlotte counted 16 chillies. Jake and Matthew measured the large rectangle as 80 by 60 cm. We then went 48 x 16 and got 768."
  • 7B2, The Vyne Commuity School
  • Wednesday, February 09, 2011
  • "We took a mean of the classes estimates and got 704."
  • Miss Wade, Haywood Engineering College
  • Thursday, February 10, 2011
  • "8T thought 580.
    We split the picture into eight and estimated by counting, 4 of the rectangles, then doubled the answer."
  • Mr Lockett, Finham Park School
  • Monday, October 03, 2011
  • "Top set Year 10. Answers ranged from 1 to 3698!!! Using a grid we estimated 630 chillies."
  • Ollie, Longfield Academy
  • Thursday, January 19, 2012
  • "I think It's 648."
  • Grade 3 H, Muscat, Oman
  • Tuesday, February 07, 2012
  • "We think there are 800 chillis. What we did is divide the picture into 16 squares. We then estimated what one square has which was about 50. We then multiplied the number by 16 and got the answer."
  • Mr Lewis And The Jersey Gals, Jersey
  • Tuesday, February 07, 2012
  • "We tried two methods. We counted along the base and the side and multiplied and got 1026 ( but the base was quite thick with chillies so this may have been an overestimate).
    We also counted one square ( about 1/30th of the rectangle ) and counted 26 chillies making 30 x 26 = 780 which we think is better."
  • Year 7 Set 1, Surbiton High School
  • Tuesday, February 07, 2012
  • "We each took an estimate using a grid then took the average (mean) of everyones answers. We think there are 452 chillies."
  • Jay L,
  • Tuesday, February 07, 2012
  • "I am not a teacher,anyway,I think the answer is 697. If you wanted to find out how I worked it out:
    I estimated the area of the square(I could not find a ruler so I estimated the length.
    10cm in width and 15cm in length so I times 10 and 15 and I got an answer I got was 150cm.Then I found an area of a chilli and I got 0.28cm squared;0.2cm * 1.4. Next I divided 150 by 0.28 and I got 535.71 which I rounded the number and I got 536. Finally I times 536 by 1.3 which I got 697.(I times it 1.3 because some chillies overlap each other) I hope this information useful for you.:)."

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This starter has scored a mean of -12,058.5 out of 5 based on 838 votes.

 

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Computer Teacher, do your students have access to computers?
Do you have "Laptops in Lessons"?

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

Laptop

Here is the URL which will take them to a concise version of this page.

Transum.org/go/?Start=February7

Students could collect everyone's estimates on a spreadsheet.

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

Here's the URL which will take
them to a student version of this activity.

www.transum.org/go/?to=Estimate