Limerick student nabs award for crunching the numbers behind popular board game

AN ENTERPRISING student has come away with top honours from SciFest@Teen-Turn, for her innovative investigation into the maths behind the popular board game Monopoly.

Mandisa Jili from Desmond College in Newcastle West won overall best project and also first prize in the behavioural science category for her project Luck Misled. 

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Her project looked at how the board game is designed mathematically to produce unequal outcomes, which challenges common assumptions about luck and randomness. 

Mandisa built a computer simulation, which analysed landing frequencies in the game over long periods of play. 

She then calculated theoretical probabilities and through a large-scale survey, she revealed the gaps in people’s understandings of probability and the role of human bias in decision-making. 

Speaking about the project, she said: “Every part of the project took huge effort, especially debugging the simulation and working through challenges with the Markov Chain.

“What I’m most proud of is pushing through those challenges and seeing everything come together.”

Over the course of three months, Mandisa took part in the Teen-Turn’s project squad programme and attended Saturday sessions in the University of Limerick, getting valuable feedback from students, academics and industry volunteers. 

Mandisa also presented her project at the Stripe Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition.