My daughter found her first four leaf clover this summer! It was a very exciting event. I myself even pulled out my old box from the attic with my childhood pressed leaf collection to see how many clovers I had found.

I did not have Google (nor a computer) when found my first four leaf clover, so I never had the chance to look up the odds quite so easily. Based on experience, I would have guessed about 1 in 5000. However, according to my research, the probability of randomly picking a four leaf clover is 1 in 10,000. I must be luckier than normal! The next day, both kids spent several hours combing through our lawn. They found eight more! We all must be luckier than normal.

Further googling of clovers revealed that other factors may explain the higher frequency of four leaf clovers. The extra leaf is a mutation thought to be affected by weather and growing conditions or possibly a recessive gene that appears in low frequency. I also found out that there actually can by five, six and even seven leaf clovers which are very rare.

If you find a four (or more) leafed clover, look around the same area. There are often similar ones near by. This one exciting event led to many new explorations in estimation and probability:

1. How many clovers are there in a square meter, our yard, the school yard?
2. How many clovers can you look at in a minute, an hour, a day?
3. How many lucky clovers can you expect to find in a day?

After we came inside the discussion evolved on to the following new questions:

1. What is the probability of flipping a heads or tails on a coin?
2. What is the probability when you roll dice, spin a spinner, and draw the Queen of Hearts from a deck of cards?

What is the likelihood of being born with blues eyes?

1. Probability and Genetics
2. More conditional probability problems

What is the chance of having an Earthquake? Do we have insurance for earthquakes?

1. Earthquake Probability Map

Who pays for the insurance? How is it calculated?

1. Our insurance premiums

And even what is the likelihood mom will give us ice cream for asking such great questions!

According to legend the leaves represent hope, faith, love, and luck — something we can always use more of. My weedy lawn is approximately 1/12 dandelions, 1/5 moss and 2/3 clovers now. Can you figure out how much grass that leaves? We've decided to give up weeding and let the clovers grow saving us more time to search for lucky clovers.

Tell me the answer!

Take some time to find your own lucky four leaf leafed clover!