Science Fair Family Feud

The Elam and Crutchfield families were the best of friends.  But once a year friends became the worst of enemies—when the Abilene city schools sponsored the Science Fair.

On the run-up to that annual event, the Crutchfield father of five let his chicanery slip.  While sharing a libation or two, John bragged he and son Joe had installed laboratory equipment to help grow experimental ‘cultures’ for the upcoming Science Fair.

Holy Pasteur—what were the odds my Mickey’s homemade weather station, or my Cindy’s stereoscopic effect in movies could possibly compete?

Fortunately, ‘twas the time of year when I went to the broadcaster’s convention in Chicago. I added a visit to the Field Museum where, Eureka, the Chicago high school science winners were exhibiting.

Probability was the answer.   I memorized that high school scientist’s winning entry.  Mickey loved the project.

She flipped a coin hundreds of times and recorded number of heads and tails. She made a poster of Pascal’s predictive chart.  Employing the leaning board with nails spaced and hammered the length of the board, Mick rolled BBs from top to bottom—where as predicted, the shot created a predicted ‘bell curve’ mound.  Mickey rolled dice and counted the random number of times that ‘snake eyes’ appeared. She learned a new word—‘random.’

Probability placed first in Mickey’s elementary school fourth grade.

However, at the city-wide fourth grade contest her project received only an Honorable Mention.  Mickey’s fourth grade teacher corralled the judge, another fourth grade  teacher who had been her classmate at Abilene Christian College.

“How could you only give my student an ‘honorable mention?’   You think statistics is not a science?”  And voiced other objections.

The science project judge responded:

“I didn’t know who your student was, but I don’t think a fourth grade student should be gambling.”

What the judge didn’t know was that Mickey was a member of his Sunday school class.

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay