High School Students Understanding Of Probability Values

As probability and statistic go to middle school teaching, even primary school teaching, it's urgent to study them. What's more, nowadays the society uses probability more than before, but the textbook concern computation of probability, not representation, explanation and usage. Because students of different ages maybe have different ideas to probability value. Only by recognizing how students know about them can we carry out teaching and organize teaching material reasonably.The paper contains three sections. The lirst section includes the first chapter and the second chapter. In this part the author illastrates the purpose of writing this paper, related internal and international study and investigating methods adopted in this paper.The second section has chapter III, chapter IV, chapter V, they introduce the outcome of the survey for three problems respectively. Three problems are whether the students identify with different representation of probability, how to explain probability and whether to use probability value when the students make decision. Chapter III studies the first problem in two aspects, one is self-identify with qualitative and quantitative representation; ihe other is tendency of three probability definitions. The results indicate that students who identify with qualitative representation are more than ones who identify with quantitative, only about 10% students identify with qualitative, not quantitative. Backgrounds effect on tendency of probability definition.Chapter IV studies students to explain probability value in two aspects, one is of qualitative and quantitative; the other is of classical, experimental, subjective. The results show that the students who explain by quantitative are more than ones who explain by qualitative. The students tend to use experimental explanation, not subjective explanation.Chapter V goes on with the research on applying probability value in three aspects. One is how to make decision on fixed probability value, the second is how the decision affects while probability value changes, and the third is whether decision is effected by a given outcome. The results show that backgrounds and data effect the students' decisions by the usage of prob ability value, decision is not effected by a given outcome on the whole.The last section sums up this thesis, which introduces the main conclusion, suggestions for curriculum and teaching, continuous study thesis.