The lack of probability culture in Italy. Toward an international comparative research program

Probability culture is a basic part of the background knowledge in the hard sciences. Its influence in our decision making criteria has an increasing impact also in our everyday life. In this paper we discuss the Italian endowment in probability culture. After shortly investigating what are the origins of the intrinsic difficulties that emerge with the study of probability we discuss the issues of learning and teaching the discipline by analysing the results of a recent national statistical analysis. We propose the introduction of new experimental teaching techniques, especially in the developmental age. An extensive research program is proposed which includes international comparison methods as well as the in-depth investigation of the outstanding performances of cities like Shanghai.