Posted by On Sunday, March 10th, “Dr. A.R. Teem’s Carnival of Steamantics” returned as an exhibitor booth at the 2024 LA County Science Fair. The exhibitor booths were open to the public, where students and their families were able to experience various STEM activities.
Highlights from our booth:
The VR Roller Coaster where students got to experience the thrill of a rollercoaster using Oculus VR.
Math Games, including the Tower of Hanoi puzzle, 3D-Tic-Tac-Toe, and guess the Platonic Solids.
Demonstrations of the Monty Hall Problem/Paradox.
And, last but not least, the “Guess and Win” experiment. The rules were simple:
- Pick an amount of money between $1 and $200 (such as $102.50).
- At the end of the day the LOWEST value submitted wins that amount.
- In an update to the rules, the lowest value had to be unique: if multiple people submitted the same value, those guesses were not eligible to win.
In total, 68 valid guesses were submitted. Compared to last year (see here for the summary for 2023) the fact that people had to try to submit a value different from everyone else seems to have greatly affected people’s strategies.
- From the 68 guesses, 63 different values were guessed. The only repeats were $1.02 (guessed three times) and $1.08, $1.13, and $2.00 (each guessed twice).
- Only one person submitted a guess of $1.00 and the next lowest unique guess was $1.03 (no one guessed $1.01!).
- Compared to 2023, there were substantially fewer repeated guesses. In 2023, 10 people submitted exactly $1.00 and an additional 5 people submitted $1.01.
The average of all the valid guesses was $25.09. Additional statistics (the Five Number Summary) from the data:
| Min | First Quartile | Median | 3rd Quartile | Max |
| $1.00 | $1.48 | $9.75 | $26.80 | $191.26 |
Overall, the event was very fun! Signup for our email newsletter by clicking here for the latest updates and information on upcoming events! Have an event you’d like “Dr. A.R. Teem’s Carnival” to attend? Reach out to us at info@areteem.org.
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