A percepção de licenciandos em matemática sobre a aleatoriedade

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the perception of a sample of students graduated in mathematics from universities in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre on randomness, within the context of probabilistic education and statistical education. Moreover, the conceptions of these subjects on related terms, such as Determinism and Chance, were verified as the definition that these students have about Probability, and the relation they establish with randomness and with Statistics. This work was a case study, and as a method of analysis, we used the Discursive Textual Analysis. Data were collected through personal interviews with the students, and from the Corpus analysis, categories were generated for each of the above objectives. Among the main results obtained, is that the students have a conception about their own randomness, however, they do not relate it strongly to the probability, just as happens with the concept of chance. In relation to determinism, the students showed an ignorance of the term. Regarding the relationship between probability and statistic, the students showed difficulty in differentiating the two concepts and in defining statistics. Still, the students recognized randomness and probability in various situations of reality, although often referring to the casting of dice or coins. These results suggest that learning of probability and statistic by mathematics teacher´s is insufficient to teach these subjects, since there is usually only one discipline in the math course and it is taught together with engineering courses. As the students of this research have shown, a superficial formation, it is difficult to satisfactorily understand these concepts in a way connected to reality, a prerequisite for effective teaching.