PROCEEDINGS OF THE 15TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION (Vol 2)
2012
Portland, Oregon
Summing Up Students’ Understandings of Sigma Notation
Page: 2-551
Within the context of an advanced calculus instructional design teaching experiment, four students encountered interesting difficulties with sigma notation. This report tells the story of those students’ progress; it describes the nature of the difficulties encountered and the ways these difficulties were resolved. Specifically, we wish to answer the questions: 1) How do post-calculus students talk about and use sigma notation? 2) How do they handle the transition from discrete to continuous cases in their use of sigma notation? In particular, a) What challenges do students encounter when transitioning from sums involving the terms of a sequence to sums involving approximate area under a function? b) What skills or tools do students use to meet these challenges?