Skyfall: Representations in probability problems in Engineering

Abstract

Probabilities, conditional probabilities, total probability theorem, and Bayes' formula are contents of higher education Probability and Statistics courses in Engineering degrees. Students' difficulties in learning these probability concepts were already discussed in previous researches. In this work, we present an attempt to use a reference matrix to analyze students' representations in a probability problem. In what concerns the results to our first analysis, when considering only the students with correct or partially correct answers, they revealed a better performance in the written language representation. Among students with a better overall performance in the correct and partially correct answers, the worst results were the answers with the symbolic representation. The tests analysis needs additional development including the wrong cases and the reference matrix of analysis needs further improvement so that in future students may overcome their difficulties in learning these concepts.