PROCEEDINGS OF THE 18TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2015
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
When mathematicians grade students’ proofs, why don’t the scores agree?
Page: 790
This poster reports on a study of practices that mathematics professors use to grade proofs. In an initial study, four mathematicians evaluated and scored six proofs of elementary theorems written by students in a discrete mathematics or geometry course. The results indicated that, while the professors generally agreed in their overall evaluations of the proofs, the scores varied substantially. A follow-up study delved more deeply into the reasons for the spread in the scores. This poster presents four reasons why the professors did not always agree in their scoring of the proofs: (a) performance errors, (b) disposition toward grading, (c) judgments about the student’s level of understanding and the seriousness of errors, and (d) contextual factors.