Is This Cylinder Left or Right?

Calculus is often viewed as a gateway to more
technical college majors, such as engineering,
computer science and teaching of mathematics. The
high rate of students changing their majors from
science-oriented to less mathematically rigorous
majors can be observed at any University. Students
struggle with passing multivariate content of the
calculus college sequence (calculus I, II, and III)
in particular, the visual aspect of the course. In
the course of semester-long study, observed students
divided into three distinct groups according to
their mathematical visualization preference and
mathematical accuracy characteristics. This book
provides an opportunity for mathematics education
community to view some of the basic visual
mathematical concepts within multivariate context
through the students eyes. The results were
analyzed through the theoretical frame of Krutetskii
(1976), Presmeg s (1985, 1988) mathematical
visualization instrument and types of imagery; and
Guzman s (2002) types of visualization. In addition,
analysis of students errors was made within
Donaldson s (1963) classification of errors.

Autorentext

Yelena A. Meadows, Ph.D.: Mathematics Education at Florida State University (U.S.A.); M.S.: Pure Mathematics at Florida State University (U.S.A.); B.S. Applied Mathematics at Altay State University in Barnaul, Russia. Lecturer at University of Tennessee at Martin.

Klappentext

Calculus is often viewed as a gateway to more technical college majors, such as engineering, computer science and teaching of mathematics. The high rate of students changing their majors from science-oriented to less mathematically rigorous majors can be observed at any University. Students struggle with passing multivariate content of the calculus college sequence (calculus I, II, and III) in particular, the visual aspect of the course. In the course of semester-long study, observed students divided into three distinct groups according to their mathematical visualization preference and mathematical accuracy characteristics. This book provides an opportunity for mathematics education community to view some of the basic visual mathematical concepts within multivariate context through the students' eyes. The results were analyzed through the theoretical frame of Krutetskii (1976), Presmeg's (1985, 1988) mathematical visualization instrument and types of imagery; and Guzman's (2002) types of visualization. In addition, analysis of students' errors was made within Donaldson's (1963) classification of errors.