Understanding the conditional probability through Anthropological Theory of the Didactic

Abstract

Part of the problem described in specialized literature about the teaching-learning process of conditional probability is mainly related to biases and the context of the problems. The research described in this article has a qualitative and exploratory approach under natural observation. The sample will be chosen by convenience and will be obtained from a group of engineering students, at university level, who study probability and statistics as part of the common core subjects and who have studied conditional probability. Participants will be assigned four tasks, each with four items to fullfill; two of the tasks were selected from questionnaires that are already statistically validated to find biases associated with the concept of conditional probability and with which students are already familiar; while, in the remaining tasks the problems will be presented in a different context from their field of knowledge but they will show the same bias. The tasks were modified under the theoretical framework through the Anthropological Theory of Didactics, with the intention that, when analyzing their productions, it is detected what and how the students solve the proposed activities, providing evidence that allows to establish how they understand the conditional probability. With the information obtained, it is expected that the students acquire the capacity to focus on the points where it is necessary to influence the correction of biases, and in this way, they will be able to successfully solve conditional probability problems.