Casino Royale: Playing the Odds in Ross 305

Parents make the decision to enrol their children at Brentwood in the hope of them being well prepared for life beyond high school. At Brentwood we are given the opportunity to learn life’s most essential skills: we learn how to live independently, develop critical, global-minded thinking skills, foster lifelong relationships, and, as importantly, how to play the odds at gambling. The Foundations of Math 12 classes have spent the weeks leading up to the big event learning about the different aspects of calculating probability, including mutually exclusive events, dependent versus independent events, and, of course, determining the house edge and the odds of winning at the table or the track. To demonstrate that we had grasped these essential mathematical concepts of gambling, and to model our understanding of how casinos are able to separate people from their money, we had been tasked with a term-end project of creating our own casino game. We were expected to create a game, determine minimum and maximum bet values and betting increments and payouts, as well as the odds of our game paying out for a winning bet, and the house edge. Additionally, the game needed to be designed to earn as much profit as possible, which had to be tracked by our accounting of inflows and outflows.  Our teacher, Ms Wolinsky, said the goal of this project was “to put together everything we have learned in the probability unit in a fun and exciting way - and to provide stress relief at the end of a busy semester. Besides, it’s better than a unit test!” A wide variety of games, such as “Lucky Ducky” and “Dart-Poker” were on display in classroom R305 on Wednesday, as students from other classes, and staff members, visited our classroom to try their luck at our casino. The event was a success, with each group in our class earning a profit on their game! It was a wonderful way to end the term before we head home for break, and we’re looking forward to what’s to come in Foundations in the new year! Zjaya D, Allard ‘19