Elementary School Students’ Intuitive Conceptions of Random Distribution
Sibel Kazak, Jere Confrey
More Detail

Abstract

This research focuses on fourth-grade (9-year-old) students’ informal and intuitive conceptions of probability and distribution revealed as they worked through a sequence of tasks. These tasks were designed to study students’ spontaneous reasoning about distributions in different settings and their understanding of probability of various binomial random events that they explored with a set of physical chance mechanisms. The data were gathered from a pilot study with four students. We analyzed the interplay of reasoning about distribution and understanding of probability. The findings suggest that students’ qualitative descriptions of distributions could be developed into the quantification of probabilities through reasoning about data in chance situations.

License

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Research Article

INT ELECT J MATH ED, 2007, Volume 2, Issue 3, 227-244

https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/211

Publication date: 12 Dec 2007

Article Views: 2437

Article Downloads: 1652

Open Access References How to cite this article