PROCEEDINGS OF THE 22ND ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2019
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Mathematicians’ validity assessments of common issues in elementary arguments
Page: 188
This study explores how mathematicians view validity in the face of explicit validity issues within written mathematical arguments in the context of the Introduction to Proof (ITP) setting. An internet survey of 30 arguments was constructed leveraging common issues in validity at the ITP level, and widely distributed to research-active mathematicians in the United States. The results suggest that there is no consensus as to the effect of any single validity issue on the overall validity of an argument, lending credence to the notion that argument validity lacks a consistent set of criteria from one mathematician’s point of view to the next.