Reports examples of the behaviors, including kinetic and vocal, used to facilitate problem-solving based on observations of four seventh-grade students. Discusses the use of the behaviors in problem-solving teaching. (YP)

Investigates children's behaviors and conceptual achievements in the transition from informal calculation strategies to a written division algorithm. Describes five different strategies observed in the solution of division problems. Discusses the implications of the children's behavior. (YP)

Interviewed 59 2nd- and 44 3rd-year elementary school students concerning their solutions to arithmetic problems commensurate with their age and ability. The results indicate that as children progress through school, they continue to use counting as an important part of their problem-solving repertoire, combining counting skills in idiosyncratic…

Examined the development of proportional reasoning by means of a temperature mixture task. Results show the importance of distinguishing between intuitive knowledge and formal computational knowledge of proportional concepts. Provides a new perspective on the relation of intuitive and computational knowledge during development. (GLR)

The purpose of this paper is to show, by computer examples, that very different results can be obtained by rearranging selected conditionally convergent series. Computer programs allow the students to select the real number to which they wish the rearrangement to converge. Two computer programs are appended. (KR)

The problem of determining the most energy-efficient strategy to use in approaching a traffic light that is sighted at an unknown phase in its cycle is discussed. Included are calculations, results, and conclusions. (KR)

Presented is a combinatorial problem based on the Hash House Harriers rule which states that the route of the run should not have previously been traversed by the club. Discovered is how many weeks the club can meet before the rule has to be broken. (KR)

A demonstration used in a heat and material balances class that explains how a reusable heat pack works is described. An initial homework problem or exam question is provided with its solution. A discussion of the solution is included. (KR)

Discussed are teaching methods that can be used in association with amusement park rides. The basic principles behind the effects of several rides are reviewed and illustrated. (CW)

The study investigates the relationship between memory updating and arithmetic word problem solving. Two groups of 35 fourth graders with high and low memory-updating abilities were selected from a sample of 89 children on the basis of an updating task used by Palladino et al. ["Memory & Cognition" 29 (2002) 344]. The two groups were…

Age-related changes in children's performance on simple division problems (e.g., 6 divided by 2, 72 divided by 9) were investigated by asking children in Grades 4 through 7 to solve 32 simple division problems. Differences in performance were found across grade, with younger children performing more slowly and less accurately than older children.…

In the international community of mathematics and science educators the intuitive rules theory developed by the Israeli researchers Tirosh and Stavy receives much attention. According to this theory, students' responses to a variety of mathematical and scientific tasks can be explained in terms of their application of some common intuitive rules.…

Finite mixture models are well known to have poorly behaved likelihood functions featuring singularities and multiple optima. Growth mixture models may suffer from fewer of these problems, potentially benefiting from the structure imposed on the estimated class means and covariances by the specified growth model. As demonstrated here, however,…

Least squares regression is the most common method of fitting a straight line to a set of bivariate data. Another less known method that is available on Texas Instruments graphing calculators is median-median regression. This method is proposed as a simple method that may be used with middle and high school students to motivate the idea of fitting…

In preparing to teach speed to a Y10 intermediate class in a multicultural secondary modern, the author was aware of the difficulty in getting students not only to follow a complex logical argument, but also to be able to reproduce it in a variety of different problem situations. Normally one would set out the working out of the problem as a…