MODEL-ELECTING ACTIVITY WITH CIVIL ENGINEERING STUDENTS TO SOLVE A PROBLEM INVOLVING BINOMIAL DISTRIBUTION

Abstract

This research presents the results of the implementation of a model-electing activity called Brickyards, designed to promote the learning of the binomial distribution. The theoretical framework used was the Models and Modeling Perspective, and the participants were undergraduate students enrolled in a probability and statistics course of the Bachelor Civil Engineering Program at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico. The activity was refined during three semesters, and here we report the models generated by the students in the fourth implementation. In the first stage of the activity of this implementation, students proposed wrong solutions, which were based on ideas of proportionality and linear thinking. The activity was designed to inhibit these types of solutions and to encourage students to realize when they are dealing with a random phenomenon, and that they need a probability distribution to solve the activity. The students used RStudio software to calculate probabilities.