Questions tagged [mathematical-pedagogy]
for questions on general considerations and problems of teaching mathematics, i.e., issues specific to teaching mathematics yet relevant to various contexts and courses.
457
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Unique candidate that fails
In the comments to David Speyer's answer here, he points out that "the distinction between 'if there is a formula, it is this one' and 'this formula works' is subtle."
Does anyone have any simple, ...
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Issues with "equals", where does this come from and how do I combat it?
An issue I see with students a lot is abuse of the equals sign. For example, one problem asked "what is the degree of the polynomial: $\text{polynomial}$?", and I got answers like "$\text{polynomial}=...
user5108
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What's a replacement for "married couples" in combinatorics problems?
Many counting problems start with the assumption that we have a certain number of men and women or a certain number of couples, with the assumption (often unstated) being that that gender is binary (...
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11
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Whence the "everything is linear" phenomenon, and what can we do about it?
$$ \color{red}{(a+b)^2 = a^2+b^2}$$
$$ \color{red}{\sqrt{x^4+y^4} = x^2+y^2} $$
$$ \color{red}{e^{t^2+C} = e^{t^2}+e^C}$$
I've observed this phenomenon -- wherein, implicitly, students say, "...
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How to get past the "mystique" of Maths
This question is primarily discussing maths education for adult learners, on courses teaching engineering mathematics at an undergraduate level. These students generally never set out specifically to ...
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3
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How do blind people learn mathematics?
I am interested in how blind people learn mathematics at any level, but particularly before college. Math is often taught using a lot of visualization; how does this work with blind people?
My ...
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24
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How to explain Monty Hall problem when they just don't get it
Talking to some friends, I was asked to explain the answer to the Monty Hall problem (see also here;) .... they were having some trouble because whoever explained it to them didn't do a very good job. ...
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Knowing mathematics does not translate to knowing to teach mathematics. Why?
Many brilliant mathematicians seem to make average or even poor classroom teachers. Is this an accurate assessment? Has there been any research to explain the phenomena?
What is the difference ...
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28
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Good, simple examples of induction?
Many examples of induction are silly, in that there are more natural methods available. Could you please post examples of induction, where it is required, and which are simple enough as examples in a ...
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Is it advisable to avoid teaching "multiplication as repeated addition"?
I've had this discussion with a couple of friends. I argued that teaching multiplication as repeated addition isn't a good idea because it doesn't help children differentiate between the two ...
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How to teach math to someone who is neither [really] willing nor able to understand it?
I'm not a teacher, I am a student. But in math, I am one of the best ones in my class so sometimes other people will ask me to explain stuff to them. And usually it works quite well: If I understood ...
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What does math education research know about difficulty vs. effectiveness?
I've asked basically the same question previously on on math.SE, then
cogsci.SE without much response, surely here is the place to ask this.
As anecdotal evidence is plentiful, but unfortunately ...
user370
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7
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A Lexicon of Math Mistakes
Neil Postman wrote an interesting (and freely available) article called "The Educationist as Painkiller." I highly recommend you read the article for your own enjoyment and as a background to this ...
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Taxonomy of bad proofs
I am interested in finding examples of poorly written proofs that exemplify the types of mistakes made by undergraduate students in their first year or two of writing proofs. I am interested both in ...
- 521
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How can we help students learn to write about their mathematics?
As a guiding example, imagine an undergraduate Calculus II course where students have to complete a guided "research project" and write a "paper" about their work. This can be a shockingly new ...
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Imbuing a six year old with a sense of mathematical wonder
My six year old started school a few months back and he's loving it. This first year is more about social skills than anything academic and I like that approach. But we're spending some time at home ...
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How can teachers warn students about common mistakes without causing the student to make the mistake?
For example, if you're teaching integration of $\int \frac{dx}{1+x^2}$, would you mention the common wrong answer of $\ln\left(1+x^2\right)+C$?
--
For myself, I very rarely mention common mistakes ...
user13544
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13
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Lecturers "(intentional) mistakes" as a teaching tool
I have heard the story (may be an urban legend?) of a top professor who occasionally wanted to teach freshman analysis. He believed in the method of letting students see how a mathematician's mind ...
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Justifications for: Why learn mathematics?
I wonder how you teachers walk the line between justifying mathematics because of
its many—and sometimes surprising—applications, and justifying it as the study
of one of the great ...
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Questions with "round" answers only?
Textbook writers are blessed with only solving problems with neat answers. Numerical coefficients are small integers, many terms cancel, polynomials split into simple factors, angles have ...
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18
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How to teach someone that $-3>-4$?
I am trying to teach a teenage person math, but he doesn't seem to be able to grasp the concept of negative numbers and $0$.
Again and again he finds $-4$ greater than $-3$ because he has spent ...
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Revisiting topics from previous courses [closed]
I teach calculus to students who have almost all taken calculus before. (Primarily first-year college students who took calculus in high school but didn't perform well enough to skip the course.)
...
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5
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Inability to work with an arbitrary mathematical object
This question is motivated by student responses to homework and quiz problems I have recently posed in an undergraduate real analysis course. I will share some examples and observations first, to ...
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What is the rationale for the absent (+) in mixed fractions?
Why are students taught to represent one and a half as $1 \frac{1}{2}$ rather than $1 + \frac{1}{2}$? This mode of expression seems standard at least throughout North America. I believe that it is bad ...
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What do you say to students who want to apply Banach-Tarski theorem in practice?
Once when I was talking about Banach-Traski theorem (paradox) I said:
OK! This is Banach-Tarski's theorem which is against our intuition but provable from our intuitive axioms! It says you can ...
user230
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9
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Can mathematics be learned by ONLY solving problems?
Here is the concept:
Student is presented with a problem. He/she may not even understand what is being asked, or may attempt.
Students reads a solution to the problem. In it there may be ...
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Are the words "easy," "basic," "clearly," "obviously," etc., ever helpful?
This is a very basic fact from...
It then clearly follows that...
Obviously, we have...
The proof is trivial...
I could add plenty of other phrases to this list that mathematicians are prone to use ...
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29
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6
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How can we help students who are very anxious about math?
In many parts of the world, the majority of the population is uncomfortable with math. In a few countries this is not the case. We would do well to change our education systems to promote a healthier ...
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How should a student's inefficient calculation be pointed out?
One time I watched a student solve the equation $0 = (x-2)^2-9$ for $x$ like this.
$$\begin{align*}
0 &= (x-2)^2-9
\\0 &= (x^2-4x+4)-9
\\0 &= x^2-4x-5
\\0 &= (x+1)(x-...
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The Undergraduate Responsibility Gradient
We tell undergraduate students that they should study two to three hours for every hour they spend in class. We know that many students don't follow through with this nearly to the degree that they ...
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6
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Would taking 5 minutes to explain the history behind a mathematical idea help stimulate learning the idea?
I read a paper in my "Research Issues in Mathematical Education" class that I have applied to the Undergraduate Calculus I and Calculus II class that I teach. I take five minutes to explain the ...
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Counterexamples in first year calculus
Many believe (I think rightly so) that the presentation of counterexamples should play an important role in the teaching upper level mathematics courses such as real analysis and topology. ...
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When should we first teach variables in school math? And how?
From a pedagogical point of view, when is the "right" moment to introduce letters and variables to school children?
Let's say we taught arithmetic, the four operations, did computation exercises, or ...
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What methods successfully identify and eliminate severe math anxiety?
What methods are effective in identifying and eliminating severe math anxiety, this most terrible and unfortunate part of modern mathematics education? This question is not about ordinary math anxiety ...
- 1,117
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2
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Students who know high-level math before going to college
There is a high school in the city I live in which has some high-level math courses in their curriculum. It's a special math class mentored by some university lecturers, and the children basically do ...
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What books are like Knuth's Surreal Numbers?
I'm looking to find more examples of books which bridge the gap between "story" and "mathematics" using narrative and all those other wonderful features we might find in Harry Potter or some other ...
- 1,117
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Why are we so careful in saying that dy/dx is not a fraction?
Calculus instructors are mostly very careful to explain that $\frac{\mathrm{d}y}{\mathrm{d}x}$ is not a fraction, and multiplying both sides of an equation by $\mathrm{d}x$ is nonsense, wrong, or evil....
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How to present $\Bbb Z/n\Bbb Z$ to highschool level audience
I have the oportunity to talk to a highschool class about mathematics, the topic I got to present are the integers modulo $n$, ie, $\Bbb Z/n\Bbb Z$ , however I don't want to be very heavy and formal, ...
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Common Core, threat or menace? Or maybe ok after all?
I have a background in math but no contact with secondary education or kids. I hear all sorts of stories ... horror stories mostly ... about the Common Core math curriculum in the USA. Then I hear ...
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How to teach pure mathematics to a well-educated adult who did badly in maths at school
My partner is a PhD student in philosophy and has recently developed a keen interest in learning pure mathematics. I am doing my best to teach her (I'm a pure maths PhD student myself) and it is ...
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How can mathematics educators encourage innovation and creativity?
Almost by definition, innovation requires that things be done differently than established custom has it, and comes from the young more often than from the old.
In a field as old and established as ...
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Too much motivation?
This is something that I felt like was difficult for me in some classes, especially lower division differential equations and linear algebra classes. I know professors want to motivate certain topics ...
user5108
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Lesson plan to self-teach real analysis to student with comp-sci background
For my background, I'm a software engineer currently studying for his master's degree in information security. But when that's all done, I plan on going back to mathematics to keep me busy. But with ...
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Are there science-backed effective teaching strategies?
As a math teacher, I am always trying to self-assess my teaching methods. I am trying a lot of different methods but I would like to organize my study on the subject without weighing too much on the ...
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Is there a Piagetian age at which proofs can be comprehended?
I am wondering if there is literature on the developmental age
(pre-adolescent?, adolescent?) at which the notion of a "proof"
can be understood? I am less interested in mathematical proofs
and more ...
- 29.5k
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14
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What can I do when advanced undergraduate and/or early graduate STEM students cannot perform correct math manipulations?
I have helped to TA and taught several courses with mixtures of advanced undergraduate and early graduate students in engineering/STEM. These courses are the classics: signal processing, control, ...
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4
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Non-answerable questions on exam: What to do?
What is a good strategy when you realize (e.g. while grading the exam) that a question on an exam was incomplete/wrong?
More concretely:
If it is decided that additional points should be given:
How ...
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Can we avoid confusion over using "let" as a quantifier?
I've encountered the following misunderstanding.
I pose a question (to undergraduates in the U.S.), for example:
Let $P$ be a polygon of $n$ vertices.
Is it true that every triangulation of $P$
has ...
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2
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Is Knuth's suggestion on teaching calculus a good idea?
Note: I myself am not a math educator, though I plan to be one someday.
In this letter, Donald Knuth suggests an alternate way of teaching calculus, based on big-O (introduced via a related big-A ...
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Why is it possible to teach real numbers before even rigorously defining them?
In mathematics, one can hardly study any mathematical concept unless it is clearly and rigorously defined. For example, without the definition the fundamental group, it is almost impossible to teach ...
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