A Comparison of Learning Subjective and Frequentist Probability.

Ever since the publication of Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 1989), probability and statistics have been prominent in the K-12 curriculum. A recent summary of research on human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty (Shaughnessy, 2003) addressed how humans rely on certain judgmental heuristics to estimate the likelihood of events. The research shows that children have a subjective approach of playing out hunches, beliefs, and intuitions about probability, yet the school curriculum does not consider subjectivity. In this study, students in grades 4, 5, 6 (n=87) from a small suburban Catholic school, were engaged in a teaching experiment to compare learning traditional probability concepts (n=44) to learning traditional and subjective concepts (n=43). Pretest and posttest scores are analyzed using a dependent samples t-test while researcher observations from classroom lessons, teacher journals and researcher interviews with students are coded for themes. All groups showed significant improvement in probabilistic reasoning (p=.01).The combined fifth and sixth grade experimental group who were exposed to subjective probability concepts improved more than the traditional students (.078), however the gain was not significant. Qualitative data shows that students have beliefs about probabilistic situations based on their past experiences and prior knowledge.. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]