This paper focuses on problem solving and problem posing in mathematics education with 6-year-olds. After working on a problem-solving activity, the young students were asked to pose a "similar" task to a friend. This article explores how the students interpret the notion of "similar." To be able to pose a problem-solving task…

This paper discusses an interesting, classic problem that provides a nice classroom investigation for dynamic geometry, and which can easily be explained (proved) with transformation geometry. The deductive explanation (proof) provides insight into why it is true, leading to an immediate generalization, thus illustrating the discovery function of…

In this paper, we highlight examples from school mathematics in which invariance did not receive the attention it deserves. We describe how problems related to invariance stimulated the interest of both teachers and students. In school mathematics, invariance is of particular relevance in teaching and learning geometry. When permitted change…

People need the idea of transformation geometry in order to understand the nature and environment they live in. The teachers should provide learning environments towards perceptual understanding in symmetry training and development practice skills of the students. In order to make up such a learning environment, teachers should have information…

Do your students think a triangle can be constructed from any three given line segments? Do they believe that a transformation affects only the pre-image--not the whole plane? Do they understand that examples--no matter how many they find--cannot prove a conjecture but one counterexample is sufficient to disprove it? "What tasks can you…

This article describes a geometrical solution to a problem that is usually solved geometrically as an example of how alternative solutions may enrich the teaching and learning of mathematics. (Contains 11 figures.)

The last 13 of 32 exercises of a course designed to give a wide range of skills in deductive, inductive, and indirect methods of proof in geometry are presented. (MP)

Presents 13 examples in which the intuitive approach to solve the problem is often misleading. Presents analysis of these problems for five different sources of misleading intuitive generators: lack of analysis, unbalanced perception, improper analogy, improper generalization, and misuse of symmetry. (MDH)

Beginning with a construction problem admitting a classical solution, the authors provide other solutions based on algorithmic estimation and transformational geometry. The latter methods are generalized to suggest solutions to other problems; hints to these solutions are provided. Teacher-student discussion could lead in many directions. (SD)

Four problems are given and discussed involving reflection about a line or the reflection properties of conic sections. Solutions are given. (MP)

Adults' geometric analogy solution was investigated as a function of systematic variations in the information structure of items. Latency data from verification of true and false items were recorded. A model incorporating assumptions about the form of item representation, working memory factors, and processing components and strategies was…

This study investigated the ways in which the technological tool, The Geometer's Sketchpad, mediated the understandings that high school Honors Geometry students developed about geometric transformations by focusing on their uses of technological affordances and the ways in which they interpreted technological results in terms of figure and…

Presents a geometric problem and illustrates four different ways to solve it: (1) a synthetic approach; (2) a coordinate approach; (3) a vector approach; and (4) a transformation approach. (KHR)

An approach to the instruction of maxima and minima problems that works with tools of geometry and algebra is presented. The focus is on a classic pie-cutting problem, which is viewed as an interesting and instructive task that is an excellent application of transformation geometry. (MP)

Two experiments investigated children's strategies for solving geometric matrices that were correctly or incorrectly completed and that varied in number of elements and number of transformations. Examining the relationship between working memory and item complexity, the first experiment tested 90 boys and girls of 7, 10, and 13 years of age for…