This paper addresses a question identified by Graham Jones: what are the connections made by<br>students in the middle years of schooling between classical and frequentist orientations to probability? It does<br>so based on two extended lessons with a class of Grade 5/6 students and in-depth interviews with eight<br>students from the class. The Model 1 version of the software TinkerPlots was used in both settings to simulate<br>increasingly large samples of random events. The aim was to document the students' understanding of<br>probability on a continuum from experimental to theoretical, including consideration of the interaction of<br>manipulatives, the simulator, and the law of large numbers. A cognitive developmental model was used to<br>assess students' understanding and recommendations are made for classroom interventions.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education