PROCEEDINGS OF THE 21ST ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2018
San Diego, California
An Undergraduate Mathematics Student’s Counterexample Generation Process
Page: 618
This paper illustrates the processes and struggles involved in a student’s generation of a counterexample. The data involves one student’s at-home proving while working on homework for his introduction-to-proof course. In this paper, we present an episode where a student engaged in substantive efforts in order to generate a proof by counterexample. We compare and contrast this episode against results from the literature on example generation to provide insights regarding the similarities and differences between example and counterexample generation as they relate to proof.