Chance


The Chance construct describes a progression of understandings about uncertainty and its measure. There are three anchoring ideas that are elaborated as students learn about chance. The first is that a measure of uncertainty, probability, relies on thinking about a repeated process where the outcome(s) cannot be known in advance with certainty. The second is that probability can be estimated by thinking about the structure of the process generating the uncertain outcomes -- a theoretical probability. The third is that probability can also be estimated by observing the outcomes of the process as it is repeated — an empirical probability.