Biases in the intuitive reasoning about probabilities present in students Sesgos en el razonamiento intuitivo sobre probabilidades presentes en estudiantes Faculty of Education Sciences of the University of Carabobo

Abstract

The teaching of statistics in academic environments is increasingly necessary, mainly to present topics such as probability theory because they are linked to the common life of individuals; however, product of the experience of each person, these notions about probabilities and determination may be influenced by situations lived and lead to conceptual errors in the intuition of them, which are called by Fuller et al (2012) as probabilistic reasoning biases. The objective of this research was to determine the presence, classification and analysis of the conceptual biases on probabilities of the students of the Department of Statistics of the Department of Evaluation and Measurement in the semester 2/2017, who have not formally begun their training on the subject, to then propose strategies that minimize the presence of such errors and promote more efficient teaching. In this research, a descriptive transectional field type design was used, they were collected directly from reality, since there was direct contact with the experimental units, the sample was made up of seventy-four (74) students from the statistician's chair of the Department of Evaluation and Measurement in the semester 2/2017, counting sixty (60) women and fourteen (14) men. The instrument that was applied was a test, will have as purpose, the identification of the procedures for the resolution of probabilities problems, in the collection of the data, Two problems were raised from Fischbein and Gazit (1984). Through this study, it was possible to confirm the presence of probabilistic errors in the teachers in training and that these mistakes are related to their intuitive perceptions product of their beliefs or basic notions that were acquired through what they have lived. As shown in the results, is remarkable the existence of erroneous reasoning in the study subjects, considering that only exercises related to the notion of probabilities were raised.