Personal Experiences And Beliefs In Probabilistic Reasoning: Implications For Research

Sashi Sharma

doi:10.29333/iejme/170

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Sashi Sharma

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Abstract

Concerns about students' difficulties in statistical thinking led to a study which explored form five (14 to 16 year olds) students’ ideas in this area. The study focussed on probability, descriptive statistics and graphical representations. This paper presents and discusses the ways in which students made sense of probability concepts used in individual interviews. The findings revealed that many of the students used strategies based on beliefs, prior experiences (everyday and school) and intuitive strategies. From the analysis, I identified a four category rubric that could be considered for describing how students construct meanings for probability questions. While students showed competence with theoretical interpretation, they were less competent on tasks involving frequentist definition of probability. This could be due to instructional neglect of this viewpoint or linguistic problems. The paper concludes by suggesting some implications for further research.

Keywords

Probabilistic Reasoning
High School Students
Interviews
Intuitive Strategies
Beliefs
Experiences
Culture
Contexts

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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, Volume 1, Issue 1, May 2006, 35-54

https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/170

Publication date: 10 Oct 2006

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How to cite this article

APA

Sharma, S. (2006). Personal Experiences And Beliefs In Probabilistic Reasoning: Implications For Research. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 1(1), 35-54. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/170

Vancouver

Sharma S. Personal Experiences And Beliefs In Probabilistic Reasoning: Implications For Research. INT ELECT J MATH ED. 2006;1(1):35-54. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/170

AMA

Sharma S. Personal Experiences And Beliefs In Probabilistic Reasoning: Implications For Research. INT ELECT J MATH ED. 2006;1(1), 35-54. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/170

Chicago

Sharma, Sashi. "Personal Experiences And Beliefs In Probabilistic Reasoning: Implications For Research". International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education 2006 1 no. 1 (2006): 35-54. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/170

Harvard

Sharma, S. (2006). Personal Experiences And Beliefs In Probabilistic Reasoning: Implications For Research. International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, 1(1), pp. 35-54. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/170

MLA

Sharma, Sashi "Personal Experiences And Beliefs In Probabilistic Reasoning: Implications For Research". International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, vol. 1, no. 1, 2006, pp. 35-54. https://doi.org/10.29333/iejme/170