Performance on conditional probability and joint probability of prospective elementary school teachers

Abstract

In this paper we study the performance of prospective elementary school teachers in conditional probability and joint probability. Participants in the study included 46 students in the 3rd year of Bachelor in Elementary Education, who received a questionnaire with four items of conditional probability and four items of joint probability. The global results suggest that participants found more difficulty in joint probability than that in conditional probability, highlighting in the correct answers the explicit or implicit calculation of the probability in question. In the wrong answers related to conditional probability, participants ignored the conditioning event and confused the conditional probability with the joint probability; while in the joint probability they added instead of multiplying probabilities, not combined the probabilities determined explicitly or implicitly to obtain the probability requested, considered the probability of only one possible order and determined the probability value of only one event.