The habitat of programming in mathematics learning : through an inquiry about the Collatz conjecture

Speaker: 

Dai Kishimoto, Waseda U., Japan

Abstract:

The aim of my research is to understand the habitat of programming in mathematics learning. In this study, the author had a hypothesis that one of the habitats is the inquiry activity, so the lesson was designed and conducted with the Collatz conjecture which is an unsolved problem in mathematics. The result of the analysis showed that students engaged in inquiry activities
like those of researchers, and they were actively using the code in their activities. The analysis also shows two different characteristics of the code developed in the inquiry process. On the one hand, ignore the economy of the code when writing it. On the other hand, to use of media references to code that have not yet been learned. These characteristics reveal that students use programming as a tool in their mathematical inquiry. Finally, the conclusion from these results is that one habitat for programming in mathematics learning is the mathematical inquiry.