An important component of intermediate and college algebra courses involves teaching students methods to factor a trinomial with integer coefficients over the integers. The aim of this article is to present a theoretical justification of that which is often taught, but really never explained as to why it works. The theory is presented, and a…

Despite the emphasis that children should have a robust sense of number and a thorough understanding of fraction (National Mathematics Advisory Panel, 2008), many students continue to struggle with these concepts. Booker Diagnostic Assessment Framework (Booker, 2011) can inform decision about teaching that improves students' learning outcomes.…

In 1225 Fibonacci visited the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II. Because Frederick was an important patron of learning, this visit was important to Fibonacci. During the audience, Frederick's court mathematician posed three problems to test Fibonacci. The third was to find the real solution to the equation: x[superscript 3] +…

This note presents another elementary method to evaluate the Fresnel integrals. It is interesting to see that this technique is also strong enough to capture a number of pairs of parameter integrals. The main ingredients of the method are the consideration of some related derivatives and linear differential equations.

This classroom note shows how Fibonacci numbers with negative subscripts emerge from a problem-solving context enhanced by the use of an electronic spreadsheet. It reflects the author's work with prospective K-12 teachers in a number of mathematics content courses. (Contains 4 figures.)

This study builds on two lines of research that have so far developed largely separately: the use of additive methods to solve proportional word problems and the use of proportional methods to solve additive word problems. We investigated the development with age of both kinds of erroneous solution methods. We gave a test containing missing-value…

Dot enumeration (DE) and number comparison (NC) abilities are considered markers of core number competence. Differences in DE/NC reaction time (RT) signatures are thought to distinguish between typical and atypical number development. Whether a child's DE and NC signatures change or remain stable over time, relative to other developmental…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relative effectiveness of two different learning modes; namely, a computer animation self-directed learning approach and a paper version of the self-directed learning approach, to 5th-graders' number sense development. Two 5th-grade classes, 30 students each, were selected from a public elementary…

The Stoltz-Cesaro Theorem, a discrete version of l'Hopital's rule, is applied to the summation of integer powers.

A. Lobb discovered an interesting generalization of Catalan's parenthesization problem, namely: Find the number L(n, m) of arrangements of n + m positive ones and n - m negative ones such that every partial sum is nonnegative, where 0 = m = n. This article uses Lobb's formula, L(n, m) = (2m + 1)/(n + m + 1) C(2n, n + m), where C is the usual…

This paper examines the way two 10th graders cope with a non-standard generalisation problem that involves elementary concepts of number theory (more specifically linear Diophantine equations) in the geometrical context of a rectangle's area. Emphasis is given on how the students' past experience of problem solving (expressed through interplay…

For more than one hundred years teachers have paddled beside the great ocean of mathematical adventure. Between them they have taught millions of young people. A few have dived in and kept swimming, some have lingered on the shore playing in pools, but most have dipped their toes in and run like heck in the other direction never to return. There…

We begin by answering the question, "Which natural numbers are sums of consecutive integers?" We then go on to explore the set of lengths (numbers of summands) in the decompositions of an integer as such sums.

Insight problem solving is characterized by restructuring. We hypothesized that the difficulty of rebus puzzles could be manipulated by systematically varying the restructurings required to solve them. An experiment using rebus puzzles varied the number of restructurings (one or two) required to solve a problem and the level at which the…

We give an irredundant axiomatization of the complete ordered field of real numbers. In particular, we show that all the field axioms for multiplication with the exception of the distributive property may be deduced as "theorems" in our system. We also provide a complete proof that the axioms we have chosen are independent.