In the context of a generic harmonic oscillator, we investigated students' accuracy in determining the period, frequency, and angular frequency from mathematical and graphical representations. In a series of studies including interviews, free response tests, and multiple-choice tests developed in an iterative process, we assessed students in both…

The effect of high school study of mathematics on numeracy performance of sports and exercise science (SES) students is not clear. To investigate this further, we tested the numeracy skills of 401 students enrolled in a Bachelor of Health Sciences degree in SES using a multiple-choice survey consisting of four background questions and 39 numeracy…

The ability to use numerical information in different contexts is a major goal of mathematics education. In health risk communication, outcomes of a medical condition are frequently expressed in probabilities. Difficulties to accurately represent probability information can result in unfavourable medical decisions. To support individuals with…

School administrators across the nation are actively searching for solutions to increase student achievement due in part to the significant amount of knowledge that is lost annually each summer. Mathematical computation skills are especially at-risk. This quantitative research study was designed to investigate the impact of summer recess also…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the misperceptions and performance of king Saud University students' about concept and finding the limit of same partial functions given in the form of both graphical and symbolic. In the collection of the data, the researcher employed the open-ended question test consisted of four items. Firstly,…

Math proficiency is related to math calculation fluency. Explicit timing provides repeated practice for math fluency. It is enhanced through goal setting, graphic feedback, and rewards. Self-selected goals have potential to increase performance for math fluency. This study compared the effect of goal lines, and researcher goals versus…

This article reports on a study which used the APOS (action-process-object-schema) theoretical framework to investigate university students' understanding of derivatives and their applications. Research was done at the Westville Campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The relevant rules for finding derivatives and their…

This article reports on students' problem-solving approaches across three representations--number lines, coordinate planes, and function graphs--the axes of which conventional mathematics treats in terms of consistent geometric and numeric coordinations. I consider these representations to be a part of a "hierarchical representational…

Some statisticians have pointed out that the field of statistics essentially exists to study the variability seen in everyday life. Because variability is so foundational, the "Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education" (GAISE 2007), published by the American Statistical Association (ASA), recommend that teachers…

Research on the graphical facilitation of probabilistic reasoning has been characterised by the effort expended to identify valid assessment tools. The authors developed an assessment instrument to compare reasoning performances when problems were presented in verbal-numerical and graphical-pictorial formats. A sample of undergraduate psychology…

In Singapore, primary school students are taught to use bar diagrams to represent known and unknown values in algebraic word problems. However, little is known about students' understanding of these graphical representations. We investigated whether students use and think of the bar diagrams in a concrete or a more abstract fashion. We also…

"Shake, Rattle, & Roll" is a new program developed by The Actuarial Foundation with Scholastic, provides dynamic real-world math content designed to build student skills while showing students the relevance of math to understanding their world and planning for their future. Math skills are increasingly important for students. According to the U.S.…

The purpose of these modules is to provide an introduction to the world of probability and statistics to accelerated mathematics students at the high school level. The materials are centered on the fictional town of Happy Shores, a coastal community which is at risk for hurricanes. Actuaries at an insurance company figure out the risks and…

Each year, well over a million students take college algebra and related courses. Very few of these students take the courses to prepare for calculus, but rather because they are required by other disciplines or to fulfill Gen Ed requirements. The present article discusses what the current mathematical needs are in most of those disciplines,…

Inference, or decision making, is seen in curriculum documents as the final step in a statistical investigation. For a formal statistical enquiry this may be associated with sophisticated tests involving probability distributions. For young students without the mathematical background to perform such tests, it is still possible to draw informal…