Analyzing student understanding in linear algebra through mathematical activity

In this paper we characterize students’ conceptions of span and linear (in)dependence and their mathematical activity to provide insight into their understanding. The data under consideration are portions of individual interviews with linear algebra students. Grounded analysis revealed a wide range of student conceptions of span and linear (in)dependence. The authors organized these conceptions into four categories: travel, geometric, vector algebraic, and matrix algebraic. To further illuminate participants’ conceptions of span and linear (in)dependence, the authors developed a categorization to classify the participants’ engagement into five types of mathematical activity: defining, proving, relating, example generating, and problem solving. Coordination of these two categorizations provides a framework that proves useful in providing finer-grained analyses of students’ conceptions and the potential value and/or limitations of such conceptions in certain contexts.     

Ostrowski’s fourth-order iterative method speedily solves cubic equations of state

Pressure-volume-temperature (P-V-T) data are required in simulating chemical plants because the latter usually involve production, separation, transportation, and storage of fluids. In the absence of actual experimental data, the pertinent mathematical model must rely on phase behaviour prediction by the so-called equations of state (EOS). When the plant model is a combination of differential and algebraic equations, simulation generally relies on numerical integration which proceeds in a piecewise fashion unless an approximate solution is needed at a single point. Needless to say, the constituent algebraic equations must be efficiently re-solved before each update of derivatives. Now, Ostrowski’s fourth-order iterative technique is a partial substitution variant of Newton’s popular second-order method. Although simple and powerful, this two-point variant has been utilised very little since its publication over forty years ago. After a brief introduction to cubic equations of state and their solution, this paper solves five of them. The results clearly demonstrate the superiority of Ostrowski’s method over Newton’s, Halley’s, and Chebyshev’s solvers.     

Some comments on “A simple method to compute economic order quantities”

In this note, we emphasize that the arithmetic–geometric-mean-inequality approach proposed by Teng [Teng, J.T., 2008. A simple method to compute economic order quantities. European Journal of Operational Research. doi:10.1016/j.ejor.2008.05.019] is not a general solution method. Teng’s approach happens to work and give the correct results when the two terms in an objective function are any functions such that their product is a constant. The classical EOQ model works fine since the product of the two terms is indeed a constant! When the product is not a constant, Teng’s approach is of little use. This is exemplified in Comment 1 via solving the EOQ model with complete backorders (where the model is regarded as having two decision variables). Comment 2 is generally valid for an algebraic method when it is used to solve an objective function with two decision variables.     

Prospective middle grade mathematics teachers’ knowledge of algebra for teaching

This study examined prospective middle grade mathematics teachers’ knowledge of algebra for teaching with a focus on knowledge for teaching the concept of function. 115 prospective teachers from an interdisciplinary program for mathematics and science middle teacher preparation at a large public university in the USA participated in a survey. It was found that the participants had relatively limited knowledge of algebra for teaching. They also revealed weakness in selecting appropriate perspectives of the concept of function and flexibly using representations of quadratic functions. They made numerous mistakes in solving quadratic or irrational equations and in algebraic manipulation and reasoning. The participants’ weakness in connecting algebraic and graphic representations resulted in their failure to solve quadratic inequalities and to judge the number of roots of quadratic functions. Follow-up interview further revealed the participants’ lack of knowledge in solving problems by integrating algebraic and graphic representations. The implications of these findings for mathematics teacher preparation are discussed.     

Reversibility of thought: An instance in multiplicative tasks

In line with current efforts to understand the piece-by-piece structure and articulation of children’s mathematical concepts, this case study compares the reversibility schemes of two eighth-grade students. The aim of the study was to identify the mechanism through which students reverse their thought processes in a multiplicative situation. Data collected through clinical interviews depict the precise strategies that the participants used to work back to find the missing values in an inverse proportional task. This study also illustrates how a conceptual template generated by one of the participants afforded him considerable flexibility in the multiplicative task. Another outcome of the study is that it shows how the numerical characteristics of the parameters in the problem affected the students’ ability to reverse their thought processes. We infer that there is a need for further research on how students might represent their reversibility schemes in the form of algebraic equations.     

Promoting students’ graphical understanding of the calculus

Our purpose in this paper is to report on an observational study to show how students think about the links between the graph of a derived function and the original function from which it was formed. The participants were asked to perform the following task: they were presented with four graphs that represented derived functions and from these graphs they were asked to construct the original functions from which they were formed. The students then had to walk these graphs as if they were displacement-time graphs. Their discussions were recorded on audio tape and their walks were captured using data logging equipment and these were analysed together with their pencil and paper notes. From these three sources of data, we were able to construct a picture of the students’ graphical understanding of connections in calculus. The results confirm that at the start of the activity the students demonstrate an algebraic symbolic view of calculus and find it difficult to make connections between the graphs of a derived function and the function itself. By being able to ‘walk’ an associated displacement time graph, we propose that the students are extending their understanding of calculus concepts from symbolic representation to a graphical representation and to what we term a ‘physical feel’.     

Basin attractors for various methods

There are many methods for the solution of a nonlinear algebraic equation. The methods are classified by the order, informational efficiency and efficiency index. Here we consider other criteria, namely the basin of attraction of the method and its dependence on the order. We discuss several methods of various orders and present the basin of attraction for several examples. It can be seen that not all higher order methods were created equal. Newton’s, Halley’s, Murakami’s and Neta-Johnson’s methods are consistently better than the others. In two of the examples Neta’s 16th order scheme was also as good.     

What “counts” as algebra in the eyes of preservice elementary teachers?

This study examined conceptions of algebra held by 30 preservice elementary teachers. In addition to exploring participants’ general “definitions” of algebra, this study examined, in particular, their analyses of tasks designed to engage students in relational thinking or a deep understanding of the equal sign as well as student work on these tasks. Findings from this study suggest that preservice elementary teachers’ conceptions of algebra as subject matter are rather narrow. Most preservice teachers equated algebra with the manipulation of symbols. Very few identified other forms of reasoning - in particular, relational thinking - with the algebra label. Several participants made comments implying that student strategies that demonstrate traditional symbol manipulation might be valued more than those that demonstrate relational thinking, suggesting that what is viewed as algebra is what will be valued in the classroom. This possibility, along with implications for mathematics teacher education, will be discussed.     

Affine varieties and lie algebras of vector fields

In this article, we associate to affine algebraic or local analytic varieties their tangent algebra. This is the Lie algebra of all vector fields on the ambient space which are tangent to the variety. Properties of the relation between varieties and tangent algebras are studied. Being the tangent algebra of some variety is shown to be equivalent to a purely Lie algebra theoretic property of subalgebras of the Lie algebra of all vector fields on the ambient space. This allows to prove that the isomorphism type of the variety is determinde by its tangent algebra.     

Differential Structure,Tangent Structure,and SDG

In 1984, J. Rosický gave an abstract presentation of the structure associated to tangent bundle functors in differential and algebraic geometry. By slightly generalizing this notion, we show that tangent structure is also fundamentally related to the more recently introduced Cartesian differential categories. In particular, tangent structure of a trivial bundle is precisely the same as Cartesian differential structure. We also provide a general result which shows how tangent structure arises from the manifold completion (in the sense of M. Grandis) of a differential restriction category. This construction includes all standard atlas-based constructions from differential geometry. Furthermore, we tighten the relationship, which Rosický had noted, between representable tangent structure and synthetic differential geometry, showing how such settings can be developed from a system of infinitesimal objects. We also show how infinitesimal objects give rise to dual tangent structure. Taken together, these results show that tangent structures appropriately span a very wide range of definitions, from the syntactic and structural differentials arising in computer science and combinatorics, through the concrete manifolds of algebraic and differential geometry, and finally to the abstract definitions of synthetic differential geometry.     

Classification and higher order analysis of manipulator singularities

A purely algebraic approach to higher order analysis of (singular) configurations of rigid multibody systems with kinematic loops (CMS) is presented. Rigid body con.gurations are described by elements of the Lie group SE(3) and so the rigid body kinematics is determined by an analytical map f : V → SE(3), where V is the configuration space, an analytic variety. Around regular configurations V has manifold structure but this is lost in singular points. In such points the concept of a tangent vector space does not makes sense but the tangent space C_qV (a cone) to V can still be defined. This tangent cone can be determined algebraically using the special structure of the Lie algebra se (3), the generating algebra of the special Euclidean group SE (3), and the fact that the push forward map f_*, the tangential mapping C_qV → se (3), is given in terms of the mechanisms screw system. Moreover the differentials of f of arbitrary order can be expressed algebraically. The tangent space to the configuration space can be shown to be a hypersurface of maximum degree 4, a vector space for regular points. It is the structure of the tangent cone to V that gives the complete geometric picture of the configuration space around a (singular) point. Identification of the screw system and its matrix representation with the kinematic basic functions of the CMS allows an automatic algebraic analysis of mechanisms.     

Why do U.S. and Chinese students think differently in mathematical problem solving?: Impact of early algebra learning and teachers’ beliefs

This paper reports two studies that examined the impact of early algebra learning and teachers’ beliefs on U.S. and Chinese students’ thinking. The first study examined the extent to which U.S. and Chinese students’ selection of solution strategies and representations is related to their opportunity to learn algebra. The second study examined the impact of teachers’ beliefs on their students’ thinking through analyzing U.S. and Chinese teachers’ scoring of student responses. The results of the first study showed that, for the U.S. sample, students who have formally learned algebraic concepts are as likely to use visual representations as those who have not formally learned algebraic concepts in their problem solving. For the Chinese sample, students rarely used visual representations whether or not they had formally learned algebraic concepts. The findings of the second study clearly showed that U.S. and Chinese teachers view students’ responses involving concrete strategies and visual representations differently. Moreover, although both U.S. and Chinese teachers value responses involving more generalized strategies and symbolic representations equally high, Chinese teachers expect 6th graders to use the generalized strategies to solve problems while U.S. teachers do not. The research reported in this paper contributed to our understanding of the differences between U.S. and Chinese students’ mathematical thinking. This research also established the feasibility of using teachers’ scoring of student responses as an alternative and effective way of examining teachers’ beliefs.     

An algebraic certificate for Budan’s theorem

The existing algorithms to construct the real closure of an ordered field involve very high complexities. These algorithms are based on Sturm’s theorem which we suspect to be one reason for the complexities since all known proofs of Sturm’s theorem use Rolle’s theorem which is problematic in a constructive context.Therefore we propose to replace the use of Sturm’s theorem by Budan’s theorem. In this paper we present as a first step in this direction an algebraic certificate for Budan’s theorem. An algebraic certificate is a certain kind of proof of a statement. In particular, it is an algorithm which produces, from an arbitrary data in the premise of the statement, explicit (in)equalities which express the conclusion.     

From decision theory to decision aiding methodology

The paper presents the author’s partial and personal historical reconstruction of how decision theory is evolving to a decision aiding methodology. The presentation shows mainly how “alternative” approaches to classic decision theory evolved. In the paper it is claimed that all such decision “theories” share a common methodological feature, which is the use of formal and abstract languages as well as of a model of rationality. Different decision aiding approaches can thus be defined, depending on the origin of the model of rationality used in the decision aiding process. The concept of decision aiding process is then introduced and analysed. The paper’s ultimate claim is that all such decision aiding approaches can be seen as part of a decision aiding methodology.     

An analytical technique for solving a class of strongly nonlinear conservative systems

Recently, an analytical technique has been developed to determine approximate solutions of strongly nonlinear differential equations containing higher order harmonic terms. Usually, a set of nonlinear algebraic equations is solved in this method. However, analytical solutions of these algebraic equations are not always possible, especially in the case of a large oscillation. Previously such algebraic equations for the Duffing equation were solved in powers of a small parameter; but the solutions measure desired results when the amplitude is an order of 1. In this article different parameters of the same nonlinear problems are found, for which the power series produces desired results even for the large oscillation. Moreover, two or three terms of this power series solution measure a good result when the amplitude is an order of 1. Besides these, a suitable truncation formula is found in which the solution measures better results than existing solutions. The method is mainly illustrated by the Duffing oscillator but it is also useful for many other nonlinear problems.     

Engineering students’ conceptions of the derivative and some implications for their mathematical education

This paper explores Mechanical Engineering students’ conceptions of and preferences for conceptions of the derivative, and their views on mathematics. Data comes from pre-, post- and delayed post-tests, a preference test, interviews with students and an analysis of calculus courses. Data from Mathematics students is used to make comparisons with Mechanical Engineering students. The results show that Mechanical Engineering students’ conceptions of and preferences for the derivative develop in the direction of the rate of change aspects while those of Mathematics students develop in the direction of tangent aspects, and that Mechanical Engineering students view mathematics as a tool and want the application aspects in their course. Students’ developing conceptions, preferences and views with regard to teaching and departmental affiliation are considered and educational implications are suggested for the mathematical education of engineering students.     

Agent based e-commerce systems that react to buyers’ feedbacks - A fuzzy approach

In this paper, we have introduced an agent based e-commerce system which recommends products to buyers as per their preferences. Initially, the agent collects the buyers’ preferences in fuzzy or linguistically defined terms and based on this, presents them an ordered set of products. After obtaining the buyers’ feedbacks when they actually come across the products, the seller’s agent interacts with the buyer (buyer’s agent), revises the products preferential order and recommends either the same set of products or a new set of similar products with the revised preferential order. The buyer’s revised preferences are taken here as his/her feedback after he/she comes across with the actual products (presented products). Concepts of fuzzy logic and Fuzzy Linear Programming are used here to identify the buyer’s feedbacks on the initial presentation of the products. Our methodology also measures the degree of customers’ focus on the products which are finally recommended by the e-commerce agent. The product ranking obtained through buyers’ initial preferences is considered here as his/her subjective information and the available information from the agents’ presented products are taken as the objective information.     

An inventory model under two levels of trade credit and limited storage space derived without derivatives

This paper tries to incorporate both Huang’s model [Y.F. Huang, Optimal retailer’s ordering policies in the EOQ model under trade credit financing, J. Oper. Res. Soc. 54 (2003) 1011–1015] and Teng’s model [J.T. Teng, On the economic order quantity under conditions of permissible delay in payments, J. Oper. Res. Soc. 53 (2002) 915–918] by considering the retailer’s storage space limited to reflect the real-life situations. That is, we want to investigate the retailer’s inventory policy under two levels of trade credit and limited storage space. Furthermore, we adopt Teng’s viewpoint [J.T. Teng, On the economic order quantity under conditions of permissible delay in payments, J. Oper. Res. Soc. 53 (2002) 915–918] that the retailer’s unit selling price and the purchasing price per unit are not necessarily equal. Then, an algebraic approach is provided and three easy-to-use theorems are developed to efficiently determine the optimal cycle time. Some previously published results of other researchers can be deduced as special cases. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate these theorems and managerial insights are drawn.