College Students' Conceptions of Probability

Students in an introductory statistics class were surveyed regarding their views about probability. The students were asked to assign some probabilities and give explanations for their assignments. Results from the surveys indicate that students were generally confused about the classical, frequency, and subjective notions of probabilities. Although the students were able to solve stylized classical probability problems, they were apt to assume that experimental outcomes were equally likely even when this assumption was inappropriate. In addition, the students were not comfortable specifying probabilities using the frequency and subjective views. This article discusses how this confusion about the interpretation of probability affects the teaching of an introductory statistics class and provides some activities helpful for teaching the various probability viewpoints.