Students’ Application of Concavity and Inflection Points to Real-world Contexts
In mathematics education, much of what is taught connects to the outside world. However, there are often disconnects between how students learn math in math courses and how they use or apply that math in the real world or in science courses. Past research has shown that this is especially true of calculus content. Dr. Steven Jones chose to study this disconnect from application to other fields by examining the calculus concepts of concavity and inflection points and how they are reasoned qualitatively and quantitatively by students. Dr. Jones conducted his research by giving students currently enrolled in calculus courses particular tasks which dealt with these concepts. Some tasks were ones that would be typically seen in their calculus classes and others dealt with examining these concepts in real world…