A associação estatística entre a escolha da operação em questões com números decimais e questões envolvendo números naturais : o caso de uma escola pública paraense

Abstract

Due to the daily necessity of using decimal numbers and these can be seen as an extension of natural numbers, the guiding question of this investigation arises: Students who correctly choose operations on issues involving natural numbers are able to have the same capacity on issues involving numbers decimals in additive and multiplicative questions? Under this guiding question, the hypothesis was established that: "The ability to correctly choose the operation in questions of an operation that involve decimal numbers is statistically associated with the ability to correctly choose the operation in questions of an operation that involve natural numbers". In order to verify this research hypothesis, the investigation aimed to analyze whether the ability to choose the operation in mathematical questions involving natural numbers is associated with the ability to choose the operation in mathematical questions involving decimal numbers. For this purpose, tests were carried out with 207 students from a public school who participated in at least 1 of the activities. The tests applied were two, one on additive questions and the other on multiplicative questions. In both tests, the questions were stratified into two groups: 1) Questions with natural numbers and questions with decimal numbers; 2) Arithmetic and algebraic questions. The results, after performing the Chi-Square test, indicate that the choice of the operation in questions with natural numbers is associated with the choice of the operation in questions with decimal numbers. Still, in the results there is an endorsement of results obtained in previous research, such as greater difficulty in solving multiplicative questions than in additive questions and greater difficulty in solving algebraic questions than in arithmetic questions. Finally, according to the proven thesis, it is clear that if the student masters the choice of the operation when studying questions with natural numbers, this domain of choice of the operation is extended to questions with decimal numbers.