This paper shows how the application of simple statistical methods can reveal to students important insights from climate data. While the popular press is filled with contradictory opinions about climate science, teachers can encourage students to use introductory-level statistics to analyze data for themselves on this important issue in public…

Sage is an open-source software package that can be used in many different areas of mathematics, ranging from algebra to calculus and beyond. One of the most exciting pedagogical features of Sage (http://www.sagemath.org) is its ability to create interacts--interactive examples that can be used in a classroom demonstration or by students in a…

Nearly 100 years ago de Donder introduced the term "extent of reaction", ?. We build on that work by defining the concept of reagent extrema for an arbitrary chemical reaction, aA + bB [reversible reaction] yY + zZ. The central equation is ?^[subscript i] = -n[subscript i,0]/?[subscript i]. The symbol ?^[subscript i] represents the…

This paper presents a comparative study of the thermal efficiencies of mechanical heat engines by using a graphical approach based on the pressure-volume ("P-V") diagram. Three types of idealized thermodynamic cycles--the Otto, the Diesel and the Brayton--are compared in pairs. Given the same temperature range within which the engines…

Progress monitoring assessment is one of the four essential components of Response to Intervention (RTI), as defined by the National Center on Response to Intervention (NCRTI). Progress data allow teachers to evaluate the academic performance of students over time, quantify rates of improvement or responsiveness to instruction, and evaluate…

The aim of this study is to examine middle school students' attitude towards mathematics in the context of their mathematic learning preferences using data mining which is data analysis methodology that has been successfully used in different areas including educational domains. "How do I actually learn?" questionnaire and attitude scale…

The goal of this study is to explore and characterize the effects of using a dynamic graphing utility (DGU) on conceptual understanding and attitudes toward mathematics, measured by the responses of college algebra students to an attitude survey and concepts assessment. Two sections of college algebra taught by the primary researcher are included…

A complete, non-trivial, traveling sales tour problem contains at least one "indentation", where nodes in the interior of the point set are connected between two adjacent nodes on the boundary. Early research reported that human tours exhibited fewer such indentations than expected. A subsequent explanation proposed that this was because…

In this paper we discuss an interesting class of noncommutative rings which can be constructed using finite directed graphs. This construction also creates a vector space. These structures provide undergraduate students connections between ring theory and graph theory and, among other things, allow them to see a ring unity element that looks quite…

In order to develop elementary school children's environmental citizenship, the 21st century teachers have to improve their own environmental literacy, and electronic sensors can have an important role in that improvement. The research presented in this paper describes an environmental education project that uses electronic sensors to support…

There are specific topics in college calculus that can be major stumbling blocks for students. Having taught college calculus for four years to over a thousand students, we observed that even the students who have already taken pre-calculus or calculus during their high school careers had common misunderstandings. Students may remember a technique…

In this paper, we describe a tool coined as artificial intelligence-based student learning evaluation tool (AISLE). The main purpose of this tool is to improve the use of artificial intelligence techniques in evaluating a student's understanding of a particular topic of study using concept maps. Here, we calculate the probability distribution of…

This article describes a two-day optics laboratory activity that investigates the scientific phenomenon of reflection, which students are generally familiar with but usually have not studied in depth. This investigation can be used on its own or as part of a larger unit on optics. This lesson encourages students to think critically and…

As part of a larger research study, this paper describes calculus students' reasoning about the Intermediate Value Theorem (IVT) in verbal, written, and graphical form. During interviews, students were asked to verbally describe the IVT in their own words. They then provided written descriptions, watched video of their verbal descriptions,…

Previously, we analyzed the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation in terms of a resources-based model that allows for clustering of questions so as to provide useful information on how students correctly or incorrectly reason about physics. In this paper, we apply model analysis to show that the associated model plots provide more information…