Compreensão de amostra e amostragem por estudantes brasileiros dos anos finais do ensino fundamental

Abstract

The increasing use of data in society for prediction and decision makes teaching Statistics a priority for students to build informal inferential reasoning. In this study, we carried out a survey with 307 Brazilian students from the 6th to the 9th grade of elementary school (11 - 15 years old) seeking to investigate what they know about sample and sampling. The results indicated a low performance, despite an increasing gradation in the average of correct answers as a function of schooling. However, since the 6th grade we observed students who answered all the questions adequately, demonstrating the possibility of understanding the concept from that age. However, most of the students in the study showed difficulty in defining a sample, presenting examples of everyday life as a response and associating population only with people. When building samples, they prioritized size over variability and failed to perceive biased samples. These results show difficulties and not impossibilities, which leaves us with the responsibility of planning good classes for everyone to effectively learn about the relation sample and sampling.