Lotto or Life: What Are the Chances?

Teaching mathematics within a science framework can be both the motivating and the informative keys to delivering a curriculum. In particular, students are naturally inquisitive about space science and the topics surrounding the existence of intelligent life in other parts of our Universe. Tapping into this curiosity, this lesson uniquely combines the concepts of astronomy and probability in order for students to compare the likelihood of intelligent life existing elsewhere in the Universe and winning the lottery.