PROCEEDINGS OF THE 16TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION (Vol 2)
2013
Denver, Colorado
Covariational Reasoning and Graphing in Polar Coordinates
Page: 2-202
An extensive body of research exists on students’ function concept in the context of graphing in the Cartesian coordinate system (CCS). In contrast, research on student thinking in the context of the polar coordinate system (PCS) is sparse. In this report, we discuss the findings of a teaching experiment that sought to characterize two undergraduate students’ thinking when graphing in the PCS. As the study progressed, the students’ capacity to engage in covariational reasoning emerged as critical for their ability to graph relationships in the PCS. Additionally, such reasoning enabled the students to understand graphs in the CCS and PCS as representative of the same relationship despite differences in appearance. Collectively, our findings illustrate the importance of covariational reasoning for conceiving graphs as relationships between quantities’ values and that graphing in the PCS might create one opportunity to promote such reasoning when combined with graphing in the CCS.