This tale illustrates one of the most familiar probabilistic misconceptions - the Gambler's Fallacy or Recency Bias. It's the same fallacy that makes the Coin thrower think that Tails is more likely after you he has tossed three Heads in succession. There are many other baises and misconceptions in the world of probability. And don't forget the conversation I showed you earlier between my students in which they showed how easy it is to miscalculate with the measure of chance. The long and the short of it is that after reading so much about probabilistic misconceptions and biases, I turned my reading towards formulating an approach to answering my research question.
Students make independent choices, and consider alternatives in whole class discussions.
They may change their choices. In addition, the social setting makes the enterprise of comprehension more meaningful . Let's recap for a second. Firstly, it seemed to offer a powerful way to confront probabilistic misconceptions head on, through probabilisitic experiments. I'd like to think that in doing this, my students will have concrete experiences to recall in later life whenever they have to make probabilistic judgements which are counter-intuitive.