PROCEEDINGS OF THE 17TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2014
Denver, Colorado
Students’ Examples Usage In The Domain Of Functions
Page: 573
Mathematicians use examples strategically while working on mathematical conjectures, and this strategic usage helps them gain a lot of insight about mathematical phenomenon. However, students do not always have the same strategic example usage; instead, they tend to over rely on examples without understanding of example based reasoning. This study examines college algebra students’ responses on a written assessment in the function domain and discusses students’ example spaces. The results reveal that students have very limited example space in the function domain that affects their strategic example usage. Student example usage was very limited to conventional example spaces that they learned during instruction or from their textbook. This study suggests that having conventional example spaces does not guarantee that students can use examples strategically which can help them better understand the mathematical conjectures.