This article addresses modeling oscillation in continuous time. It criticizes Steele and Ferrer's article "Latent Differential Equation Modeling of Self-Regulatory and Coregulatory Affective Processes" (2011), particularly the approximate estimation procedure applied. This procedure is the latent version of the local linear approximation procedure…

This article presents our response to Oud and Folmer's "Modeling Oscillation, Approximately or Exactly?" (2011), which criticizes aspects of our article, "Latent Differential Equation Modeling of Self-Regulatory and Coregulatory Affective Processes" (2011). In this response, we present a conceptual explanation of the derivative-based estimation…

This article presents Stephen Humphry's response to the commentaries for his article "The Role of the Unit in Physics and Psychometrics." The commentaries covered a range of important considerations and implications. Given that the author fully agrees with the majority of the content, attention will be confined mainly to points that call…

This essay investigates the rhetoric surrounding the appearance of the concept of the infinitesimal in the seventeenth-century Calculus of Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Although historians often have positioned rhetoric as a supplemental discipline, this essay shows that rhetoric is the "material" out of which a new and powerful…

The method of integration by parts is one of the most useful in integral calculus. Among the most important applications is the integration of differentials involving products, differentials in involving logarithms, and differentials involving inverse circular functions.

Nonstandard Analysis gives an alternative approach to teaching elementary calculus. This paper hopes to communicate to the reader the ideas of this recent development in mathematics and its implications in teaching undergraduate students. The development of the approach is first briefly traced. Then a method of constructing on ordered field…

The development of calculus and science by being permanent, didactic, demands on one part an analytical, deductive study and on another an application of methods, rhochrematics, resources, within calculus, which allows to dialectically conform knowledge in its different phases and to test the results. For the purpose of this study, the motivation…

Most people learn to drive without knowing how the engine works. In a similar vein, the author believes that students can learn economics without knowing the algebra and calculus underlying the results. If instructors follow the philosophy of other economics courses in using graphs to illustrate the results, and draw the graphs accurately, then…

The maximal rectangle idea is used to illustrate ways to ease students into the frame of mind required for problem solving in calculus. (MNS)

Focuses on students showing a lack of conceptual insight while using computer algebra systems (CAS) in the setting of an elementary calculus and linear algebra course for first year university students in social sciences. The use of a computer algebra environment has been incorporated into a more traditional course but with special attention on…

Highlights a debate concerning reform calculus between Professor Thomas W. Tucker on the reform side and Professor Howard Swann on the traditional side. (ASK)

This book brings together papers by scholars from around the globe on the historiography and history of mathematics and their integration with mathematical pedagogy. Of the three articles in Part 1, "Historiography and Sources", one identifies research trends in the history of mathematics, the second discusses the centrality of problems, and the…

Discusses personal experiences in using microcomputers to teach differential equations and calculus, including programs written for and activities in a year-long calculus sequence called Calculus and Computers. Suggests that computers and their graphics capabilities be used to provide a mathematical environment in which students can interact and…

Described are computer program packages requiring little or no knowledge of computer programing for college algebra, calculus, and abstract algebra. Widely available computer algebra systems are listed. (MNS)

The question of how a mathematics student at university-level makes sense of a new mathematical sign, presented to her or him in the form of a definition, is a fundamental problem in mathematics education. Using an analogy with Vygotsky's theory (1986, 1994) of how a child learns a new word, I argue that a learner uses a new mathematical sign both…