The teaching of mathematics is mostly done with tasks that learners and teachers do or solve, in and outside of class. These tasks, which are used to illustrate concepts in mathematics, are referred to in this paper as examples in mathematics. Examples that teachers choose and use are fundamental to what mathematics is taught and learned, and what…

Mathematics curricula have traditionally focused on content knowledge, often in the form of a scope and sequence of increasingly difficult mathematics. The importance of using and applying mathematics is recognised in the current Australian Curriculum Mathematics (AC: M) as 'proficiencies' that are intended to be integrated with the content. There…

This paper describes the development and efficacy of an online tool for assessing the numeracy of undergraduate students. The tool was designed to be easy to administer, provide immediate feedback to students on whether they had the required level of numeracy, and to be consistent with other measures of adult numeracy. When used with students…

Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) is a powerful construct for examining the complexity of teacher knowledge. Together with teachers' moment-by-moment choices of action, it provides insight into teachers' knowledge and its influence on student learning. This paper investigates the PCK experienced by a senior secondary mathematics class during a…

During the last two years, the COVID-19 pandemic had a secondary effect of increased media content loaded with mathematical, often probabilistic information (and misinformation). Our exploratory study investigates the probabilistic intuitions, misconceptions, biases, and fallacies in conditional probability reasoning of mathematics teacher…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of probability teaching with the argumentation approach on the academic achievement of pre-service mathematics teachers and the permanence of probability knowledge. Quantitative research method was adopted in the study and quasi-experimental design was used. The study group consisted of 44…

In this article, we use a simple lattice model to illustrate the concepts of entropy, free energy, and thermodynamic equilibrium from a microscopic perspective. These physical concepts are based on elementary knowledge of discrete probability distribution and weighted average. Calculations about this model involve basic algebra and counting, which…

Manfred Hauben proposes an approach to teaching non-transitive relationships between 'paradoxical' dice using simple statistical graphics. This method usefully supplements traditional approaches of conditional probability calculations and trees, and students are thereby better able to see what is going on and the mechanism of these relationships.

Reform movements in mathematics education advocate that mathematical argumentation play a central role in all classrooms. However, research shows that mathematics teachers at all grade level find it challenging to support argumentation in mathematics classrooms. This study examines the role of teachers' mathematical knowledge in teachers' support…

This paper describes an investigation looking at the underlying mathematics of poker machines. The aim of the investigation is for students to get an appreciation of how poker machines are designed to ensure that in the long-term players will inevitably lose when playing. The first part of this paper describes how students can model a simple poker…

The frequentist and classical models of probability provide students with different lenses through which they can view probability. Prior research showed that students may bridge these two lenses through instructional designs that begin with a clear connection between the two, such as coin tossing. Considering that this connection is not always…

The purpose of this study was to analyze the problem-solving techniques that students in a fifth-grade classroom applied while solving mathematical word problems. Fifth-grade students in a private school with Ministry of Education curricula in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, were given a set of 15-word problems to solve with detailed justifications. The…

This study attempted to develop a literature-informed discourse-based instructional approach and evaluated its effects on eleventh-grade students' conceptual and procedural understandings in probability and statistics. To this end, a quasi-experimental study that involved two control groups and one experimental group was used. One-way analysis of…

The objective of this qualitative research is to study the mathematical work when solving a mathematical task in the domain of probability presented by Chilean high school mathematics teachers in pre-service and in-service training. We consider as theoretical support the Mathematical Working Space model and methodological design of a collective…

Simulation modeling is an effective tool for solving problems that cannot be explained analytically or when data cannot be collected. This is done by simulating the observed behavior of a problem under study using a computer program. In math education, this can develop knowledge and fundamental competencies of simulation modeling at a higher level…