Some of our misconceptions of probability may occur just because we haven't studied much probability. However, there is considerable recent evidence to suggest that some misconceptions of probability are of a psychological sort. Mere exposure to the theoretical laws of probability may not be sufficient to overcome misconceptions of probability. Cohen and Hansel [20], Edwards [29], and Kahneman and Tversky [63-66] are among those psychologists who have investigated the understanding of probability from a psychological point of view. The work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky is especially fascinating, for the attempt to categorize certain types of misconceptions of probability which they believe are systematic and even predictable. Kahneman and Tversky claim that people estimate complicated probabilities by relying on certain simplifying techniques. Two of the techniques they have identified are called representativeness and availability. We shall explore these two techniques in more detail and discuss some implications for teaching probability and statistics in the schools.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education