PROCEEDINGS OF THE 16TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION (Vol 2)
2013
Denver, Colorado
Reasoning Abilities That Support Students in Developing Meaningful Formulas to Relate Quantities in an Applied Problem Content
Page: 2-702
This poster illustrates and describes student thinking when responding to applied problems to relate two quantities that cannot be directly related by a single formula. Students who understood the meaning of the directive to define one quantity in terms of another, and who also conceptualized variables as representing varying values that a quantity can assume were successful in constructing a meaningful formula to relate the values of two quantities that cannot be directly related by a single formula. Students who failed to construct meaningful formulas during their solution process either held the view that a variable is an unknown value to be solved for or could not meaningfully interpret the directive of the problem statement.