Abstract
The paper reflects on students’ intuitive strategies in a game of chance and contrasts their understanding with a normative probabilistic point of view. The game involves selecting optimal strategies outweighing potential gains with small probabilities with more probable losses. The paper investigates the reasoning of 46 students, analyses the rationales of their preferred strategies and their perceptions when dealing with risk. It sheds light on how their reasoning with risk is related to their knowledge about probability and how their thinking includes an evaluation of potential consequences of their choices. Responses are analysed in the light of well documented fallacies in probabilistic reasoning. Hence, the paper provides insight into students’ thinking between probabilistic reasoning, assessing risks and gut feelings.
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Notes
- 1.
Knizia’s game is based on 1 instead of 6 being the losing number. Here his considerations are adapted to 6 being the loser.
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Engel, J., Orthwein, A. (2018). The Six Loses: Risky Decisions Between Probabilistic Reasoning and Gut Feeling. In: Batanero, C., Chernoff, E. (eds) Teaching and Learning Stochastics. ICME-13 Monographs. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72871-1_15
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