A STUDENT from Desmond College won top honours at the SciFest@Teen-Turn competition for a math’s project exploring probability and how people perceive chance in one of the world’s most beloved board games.
Mandisa Jili was awarded first prize in the behavioural science category, as well as scooping the Overall Best Project award, for her project, ‘Luck Misled: A simulation-based investigation of the mathematical structure governing Monopoly’.
The project examines how the popular board game is mathematically designed to produce “unequal” outcomes, challenging common assumptions about luck and randomness.
Mandisa built a computer simulation to analyse landing frequencies on the Monopoly board over long periods of play. She posited that the game’s structure “skews” outcomes in predictable ways. A large-scale survey carried out alongside the modelling revealed gaps in people’s understanding of probability and the role of human bias in decision-making.
Reflecting on her award-winning work, Mandisa said that “every part of the project took huge effort.”
“What I’m most proud of is pushing through those challenges and seeing everything come together.”
Mandisa took part in Teen-Turn’s Project Squad programme over the course of three months and attended a Saturday Super Sessions at the University of Limerick, where she received feedback from students, academics, and industry volunteers on her work.
Her mentor, Donal Enright, praised Mandisa, saying that Mandisa’s “initial idea expanded far beyond the original brief, and at times it felt like a flipped classroom, where I was learning from the student”.