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Understanding Children’s Meanings of Randomness in Relation to Random Generators

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Teaching and Learning Stochastics

Part of the book series: ICME-13 Monographs ((ICME13Mo))

Abstract

This chapter describes an open-exploratory study with middle-grade Indian school students (aged 13–14 years) to understand their perceptions of randomness. Detailed discussions are provided of two groups of students who worked in small groups to choose, from a set of eight perfectly or partially symmetrical polyhedrons, a shape that according to them is optimal for playing the games of chance. The discussions bring to the fore different meanings that students ascribe to qualifying an object as a generator of randomness. The results indicate that students rely on physical characteristics of the object, as well as the size of sample spaces for making judgements. They also clinched to the notion of exhaustiveness of the sample space that explains, to some extent, the basis for their irrational beliefs against the cubical dice. When analysed from an alternative perspective, the responses exemplify a propensity or a disposition to the physical characteristics of the resources used in the experimental setting. The chapter concludes with a proposition of imbibing isomorphic resources as means for identifying, understanding and nurturing children’s notions and beliefs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, University of Delhi, 33 Chhatra Marg, Delhi, 110007, India

    Haneet Gandhi

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  1. Haneet Gandhi
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Correspondence to Haneet Gandhi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Facultad de Ciencias de la Educación, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Carmen Batanero

  2. College of Education, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

    Egan J Chernoff

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Gandhi, H. (2018). Understanding Children’s Meanings of Randomness in Relation to Random Generators. 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_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72871-1_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-72870-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-72871-1

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