Lexical ambiguity in probability: knowledge of elementary school students about chance, random and uncertainty
Keywords:
Probabilistic language, Lexical ambiguity, Elementary School, Multivariate textual analysisAbstract
The objective of this work was to establish possible lexical ambiguities related to the words chance, random and uncertainty by 61 students of the fifth year of Elementary School (9 to 11 years old) of a public school in Barueri, São Paulo, Brazil, seeking find out what probabilistic meanings do they indicate based on everyday knowledge and/or what they learned at school. This was exploratory research, with a qualitative and quantitative approach, in which multivariate textual analyzes were carried out, such as Similarity Analyzes and Descending Hierarchical Classification - CHD, using the IRaMuTeQ software (R Interface for Multidimensional Text and Questionnaire Analysis). The results indicate that children have formalized, even if intuitively, since the early years of basic education, probabilistic notions such as, for example, determining the meaning of the words chance, random and uncertainty, and there should be concern in working on these concepts. We conclude that, lexical ambiguities are presented in relation to the terms under study, starting from the intuitive meaning that is constituted as a basic element that the students presented for then, to build a connection with the probabilistic language, allowing them to start using a precise language and specialized.
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