Coloured Sheep

Topics: Starter | Probability

• Mr Heeley's Y7 lambs, Rawthorpe High School
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• We think your joke is a bit woolley! We think, however, that this is a fine starter, in fact it's baaarilliant!!
  God bless you x
• Mrs. Grace, Hardwick School, South Australia
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• This is a great starter to begin the day with. The students thought that it was great.
• MSJ, 8x3
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• Keenan thought it was Baarilliant.
• Mrs Porter, Upholland High
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• Fantastic starter - have used it with all years of all abilities Level 4 to A* - just change the questions to get some very difficult conditional probability questions.
  Also planning to use it to introduce ratio - it has been the most useful starter so far.
• M Phillips, Dorset
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• Great activity.
  Has the word "not" been forgotten in the part d answer?
• Transum,
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• Thanks M Phillips for pointing out the error. It has now been corrected.
• Zoe Thompson, Channing Junior School, Highgate
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• I found this GREAT!! I loved it and found it challenging but not so I didn't want to do it!
  It has made maths REALLY fun for the kids, and it is a GREAT way for the kids to start the day!
• Mr Khaira, Marriotts School
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• I think this an absolutely delightful question but surely the answer is 12, I don't get it.
• Transum,
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• A yellow sheep has two lambs. One of them is male. What is the probability that the other lamb is male? Some say one half but others say that there are four different options. The two lambs, in order of age, could be MM, MF, FM or FF. If we know one is a male that eliminates the FF option. That leaves three possibilities, MM, MF and FM. Two out of these three possibilities have one of the lambs being female so the probability that the other lamb is male is one third. So is the correct answer one half or one third?
• Mr Smith & S1 Class., Renfrew High School
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• Transum, surely an array such as MM, MF, FM and FF is order specific and whilst you eliminate FF correctly, should FM not also be removed given that the 'first' lamb was not F. This would leave you with MM and MF as the only two remaining options and with MM being the only one producing a further M lamb then the probabilty returns to the original predicition of 1/2. Just our thoughts on a very thought provoking question. Thank you.
• Mr Smith & S1 Class., Renfrew High School
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• We are humbled and have realised we misread the question, we made the assumption that it was the gender of the first lamb, but upon re-reading the question Ben pointed out that it simply said 'one lamb' not the 'first lamb'. Thoroughly enjoyable.
• Transum,
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• Q. What do you need to calculate the distance around a circle of sheep?
  A. Shepherds’ Pi.

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