Can Gambling makes kid’s superior in math is a big question? Virginia high school started poker club, eager to integrate the game’s popularity in mathematics lessons and logical reasoning.
One student, on a winning streak, told the Washington Post, “I don’t know whether math class is helping me with poker, or whether poker is helping me in math class.”
The club, which spends part of the time analyzing math concepts such as ratios with poker examples, has reportedly become one of the most popular extracurricular activities at school.
At Harvard, the link between straights and flushes has already been endorsed as a teaching tool for probability and reasoning, as well as human behavior. But some anti-gambling experts have raised alarms bells about teaching poker to teenagers who aren’t legally old enough to gamble. And here at home, a new study released this month by the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health suggested that roughly 29,000 Ontario middle-school and high-school students reported signs of problem gambling (such as skipping school to gamble).
According to the study, nearly half of Ontario students said they participated in at least one form of gambling; three per cent, when screened, showed warning signs of a problem. Those numbers should raise alarm bells, psychologists say, because students with an addiction to gambling were found to be 18 time more likely to say they had attempted suicide, 11 times more likely to report being in a gang fight and carrying a handgun, and 20 times more likely to report selling drugs other than marijuana.
So what do you think? Although poker is a great way to teach math concepts should be taught in high school?