PROCEEDINGS OF THE 19TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2016
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Supporting students in seeing sequence convergence in Taylor series convergence
Page: 1086
Virtual manipulatives designed to increase student understanding of the concepts of approximation by Taylor polynomials and convergence of Taylor series were used in calculus courses at multiple institutions. 225 students responded to tasks requiring graphing Taylor polynomials, graphing Taylor series, and describing relationships between different notions of convergence. We detail significant differences observed between students who used virtual manipulatives and those that did not. We propose that the use of these virtual manipulatives promotes an understanding of Taylor series supporting an understanding consistent with the formal definition of pointwise convergence.