FUN RESOURCES AND SOFTWARE FOCUSED ON TEACHING AND LEARNING COMBINATORY ANALYSIS AND PROBABILITY

Abstract

Combinatorial Analysis and Probability are sciences widely applied in people's daily lives. Censuses and trend statistics, used to mathematically communicate the movement of a problem in the world (as was the case with the movement of the pandemic by Covid19) are examples of this applicability. Research in the area of Mathematics has revealed that high school students face many difficulties in interpreting and using formulas in problems proposed in ENEM and that require Combinatorial Analysis and Probability. In Biology, for example, more specifically on the mechanisms of Mendel's Laws, a subject widely explored in ENEM, Combinatorial Analysis and Probability play a fundamental role. In the form of a creative movement to collaborate with the teaching and learning of Combinatorial Analysis and Probability, many software were developed by specialists in Information Technology (IT) as is the case of “COMBINA” and “GeoGebra”, software experienced by the authors of the present article. Furthermore, the MEC provides a list of programs and didactic tools in the context of teaching and learning Combinatorial Analysis. The didactic resource “A Cartomante” was selected for further discussion in this article. In conjunction with these collaborative IT elements, mathematics teachers have developed playful methodologies to mitigate the difficulties their students face in solving Combinatorial Analysis and Probability problems. From this perspective, this work sought to achieve the following objectives: select and present collaborative IT tools to improve teaching and learning of Combinatorial Analysis and Probability; to develop ludic methodologies in the form of games with playing cards, dice and coins, aiming to improve the way of teaching the aforementioned mathematics contents to the high school public. The “COMBINA” and “GEOGEBRA” softwares were selected and tested. Observations, analyses, diagnoses were carried out. It was concluded that the resources experienced are rich in information and exercises. Online access and the language of the games is quite accessible. It was concluded that the didactic resources experienced by the authors/teachers are powerful means of mitigating high school students' difficulties in Combinatorial Analysis and Probability. However, the teacher's role in guiding the use of these resources as necessary is emphasized.