Russian Fable

This resource is based on a Russian fable about deciding which girls from the village should be married. The aim of this resource is to allow students to meet a different type of problem involving listing of possible outcomes. Once outcomes are listed the probabilities can be explored.

Overview
This is a brief overview of the resource. It suggests that students get some data by doing this task experiment in pairs or groups after they have had a discussion about the historical context. Then the students could explore the theoretical probability of the different outcomes. The problem can be extended by considering more ‘blades of grass’ and it would be possible to use significance testing to compare theoretical and observed data.

Teacher Guidance
This is an easy problem to understand but not quite so straightforward to obtain the theoretical probabilities. The teacher guidance gives the probabilities for the three possible outcomes and suggests hints which can be given to students as they progress with the task.

Student Activity
This gives an account of the Russian fable about three long blades of grass folded in the middle. If a girl joins the loose ends to make a single loop she will be married the next year. It asks students to find out the probability of getting a single loop and invites students to compare the theoretical probability with experimental data.