Who's Winning at Monopoly Junior?

摘要

Monopoly Junior, a simplified, shortened version of the original Monopoly game, was designed for younger players. Even so, sometimes before games are completed, tired eyes look up and little people ask, "Who's winning now?" We can apply elementary probability, expected value, and matrix multiplication to approximate an answer to this question. This example offers a "real" problem for many students with younger siblings, in the spirit of the NCTM's Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (1989). This article also illustrates the use of modeling and simulation, which Burrill (1997) notes that mathematicians in industry report using more than any other content area.