The probabilistic reasoning of middle school students.

This chapter covers a wide range of ideas associated with probabilistic thinking and provides some examples of the potential development in understanding that occurs in students in Grades 6 through 9. The first sections include intuitive ideas on luck and fairness, as well as chance language. Secondly, various types of probabilistic events, ranging from simple events to conjunction events are explored. Finally, appreciation of random behavior, sampling and variation in a probabilistic setting, the equiprobability bias, and the importance of dealing with probability in context, are considered in the last four sections.