Prof. Dr Angelika May
Institute of Mathematics In dice games, you sometimes need quite a bit of luck to get the right number. Even rolling the dice again – and again, and again – only works sometimes. That’s just chance! You can’t predict anything before you roll the dice, and you only know which number has come up afterwards. It’s exactly the same with the lottery, where you have to pick the right 6 out of 49 possible numbers – which is why people usually lose and get annoyed that they keep picking the wrong numbers. So chance always plays a part in games of chance. Nevertheless, with maths – if you go about it the right way – you can work out quite a lot and even predict a few things. We’re familiar with this from weather forecasts, by the way: if the chance of rain for tomorrow is 80 per cent, we take our rain gear with us, even if the sun is still shining in the morning. If there’s a 10 per cent chance of rain, we’re more likely to expect good weather. So that we can explore together what such probabilities mean, please do bring a dice and a coin with you.

• Photos from the lecture

Presenter: Carola Schede, NDR

• Download – PowerPoint file for the lecture

Wednesday, 26 March 2008
4.30 pm to 5.30 pm
Audimax, lecture centre