RUME 14 (Volume 1)
2011
Portland, Oregon
IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF PROOFS FOR PEDAGOGICAL PURPOSES: A QUANTITATIVE STUDY
Page: 203
At last year’s conference, we presented a qualitative study providing insight into what mathematicians believe makes a good proof for pedagogical purposes based on eight mathematicians’ revisions of two proofs (see Lai & Weber, 2010). In this paper, we empirically test four hypotheses generated from last year’s study. This year’s study provides quantitative support for the claims that mathematicians believe (1) adding an introductory sentence stating the goals of the proof improves its pedagogical quality, (2) formatting key equations in a proof to emphasize their importance improves their pedagogical quality, and (3) unnecessary statements in a proof lowers its pedagogical quality.