Abstract
Probability culture is a basic part of the background knowledge in the hard sciences. Its influence in our decision making criteria has an increasing impact also in our everyday life. In this paper we discuss the Italian endowment in probability culture. After shortly investigating what are the origins of the intrinsic difficulties that emerge with the study of probability we discuss the issues of learning and teaching the discipline by analysing the results of a recent national statistical analysis. We propose the introduction of new experimental teaching techniques, especially in the developmental age. An extensive research program is proposed which includes international comparison methods as well as the in-depth investigation of the outstanding performances of cities like Shanghai.
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Notes
Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), OECD, http://www.oecd.org/pisa/.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Proff. Giorgio Bolondi and Miglena Asenova for sharing with us, and explaining in a seminar at University of Bologna, the results of their work (Bolondi and Asimova to be published) prior to publication.
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Pierluigi Contucci is on leave from University of Bologna.
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Contucci, P., Riga, C. The lack of probability culture in Italy. Toward an international comparative research program. Qual Quant 49, 2325–2330 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-014-0112-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-014-0112-x