PROCEEDINGS OF THE 23RD ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2020
Boston, Massachusetts
Student verification practices for combinatorics problems in a computational environment
Page: 96
Counting problems have been shown to be challenging for students to solve correctly, and one reason is that they can be difficult to verify (e.g., Eizenberg & Zaslavsky, 2004). The field would benefit from further investigations into the nature of students’ verification of counting problems. One possible avenue for verification is to have students engage with computational tools and environments. In this paper, we investigate how students verify solutions to combinatorial problems in the context of using Python computer programming. We show that students do not simply use a computed numerical answer when verifying, but they demonstrate a rich understanding between a computer program and a counting process. Further, we exhibit some affordances that using Python to verify solutions provides to the students.