Child's Play

Many people first see the application of probability in childhood. Games involving rolling dice, tossing a coin, or spinning an arrow are often a child's first introduction to chance. Much work has already been done for classic games such as Monopoly [Abbott and Richey 1997; Ash and Bishop 1972; Murrell 1999; Peterson 1997; Stewart 1996a;b; Wu and Baeth 2001], Chutes and Ladders [Gadbois 1992], and others [Lessing 1974;Watson 1981]. One recent game for children 5 and up, Balloon Lagoon [Cranium, Inc. 2004a], is four games in one, with various skill levels as well as different variants of chance. In particular, studying the probabilities associated with this game requires use of hypergeometric, binomial, and negative binomial distributions, as well as Markov chains.

In Balloon Lagoon, each player starts a turn by spinning a merry-go-round that lands on one of four venues: Letter Lake, Snack Hut, Tumble Tides, or Frog Pond. The player then has a fixed amount of time to complete or partially complete four parts of the venue. The player receives one balloon for each successfully completed part of the task (for a maximum of four balloons per turn).

Let's look at each of these venues and at the different probability models involved.

Table of Contents:

INTRODUCTION

LETTER LAKE

SNACK HUT

TUMBLE TIDES

FROG POND

ANSWERS
Letter Lake
Snack Hut
Tumble Tides
Frog Pond

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR