PROCEEDINGS OF THE 16TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION (Vol 2)
2013
Denver, Colorado
On Mathematics Majors’ Success and Failure at Transforming Informal Arguments into Formal Proofs
Page: 2-321
In this paper, we examine 26 instances in which mathematics majors attempted to write a proof based on an informal explanation. In each of these instances, we represent students’ informal explanations using Toulmin’s (1958) scheme, we use Stylianides’ (2007) conception of proof to identify what one would need to accomplish to transform the informal explanation into a proof. We then compare this to the actions that the participant took in attempting to make this transformation. The results of our study are categories of actions that led students to successfully construct valid proofs and actions that may have hindered proof construction.