The purpose of this study was twofold. First, to explore middle and high school students' intuitively-based (mis)conceptions in probability, particularly availability and representativeness heuristics. Second, to investigate teachers' awareness of these intuitively-based (mis)conceptions and the effectiveness of their instructional practices to…

Take a family of independent events. If some of these events, or all of them, are replaced by their complements, then independence still holds. This fact, which is agreed upon by the members of the statistical/probability communities, is tremendously well known, is fairly intuitive and has always been frequently used for easing probability…

In this paper, we investigate the ways in which 15 year-old students conceive interrelated issues of randomness. We deal with these issues of randomness as a whole and not separately from each other, in contrast to the research so far. In order to analyse the students' ways we introduce a modification of Kyburg's Schema [(1974). "The logical…

The paper discusses the interaction between intuitive biases of probabilistic thinking and mathematical knowledge. It would appear that students may answer numerical problems correctly but falter on simple descriptive solutions. Students appear to relinquish formal knowledge for simpler heuristics when attempting to describe the outcome of an…

Discusses the performance of Malaysian secondary school students on a probability concepts test covering various intuitive and taught probability concepts. Describes the establishment of a probability concepts hierarchy and considers probability understanding in relation to independent variables. Boys, Form Six students, and students with a higher…