PROCEEDINGS OF THE 20TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
2017
San Diego, California
Signed quantities: Mathematics based majors struggle to make meaning
Page: 1158
Physics students struggle to make meaning of the negative sign in a variety of mathematical andphysical contexts. This study is part of an ongoing concurrent mixed methods exploration ofstudent understanding of negativity in physics. A set of multiple-choice items, modified from aprior study, was administered to over 500 calculus-based college students from diversebackgrounds. Results suggest that when the positive sign is an explicit part of a quantity,students struggle with positive quantity just as they do with negative quantities, and that thelanguage that instructors use may inadvertently impute unintended meaning about signs.Key words: