Murray Black, Farida Kachapova, Sergiy Klymchuk and Ilias KachapovThe paper presents and analyses students’ attitudes towards using counter-examples and paradoxes as a pedagogical strategy in teaching/learning of a first-year university course in probability theory and applications. Our intentions of using this strategy were: to achieve deeper conceptual understanding; to reduce or eliminate common misconceptions; to advance one’s statistical thinking, which is neither algorithmic nor procedural; to enhance generic critical thinking skills , analysing, justifying, verifying, checking, proving; to increase motivation and interest in the subject; and make learning more active and creative. The majority of the students reported that the strategy was effective and made learning more challenging, interesting, and creative