PROCEEDINGS OF THE 20TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2017
San Diego, California
McNuggets, bunnies, and remainders, oh my!
Page: 855
Given its applications in computing, coding, and cryptography, the Chinese Remainder Theorem is a worthwhile, accessible, and unexplored area of number theory. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate strategies and reasoning that students exhibited while solving problems chosen to elicit thinking in elementary number theory topics related to the Chinese Remainder Theorem. We interviewed pairs of students from three different courses in order to investigate the similarities and differences that may occur as a result of varying mathematical backgrounds and partner dynamics. We identified a range of strategies including manipulating final digits, listing multiples while accounting for remainders, and implementing divisibility rules. This paper presents a portion of our findings discussing strategies for two of our three cases on several tasks from our interviews.