What is Mathematics: School Guide to Conceptual Understanding of Mathematics
Author: Cătălin Bărboianu; ISBN 9789731991986; Publisher: PhilScience Press; 316 pag.
This is not a mathematics book, but a book about mathematics, which addresses both student and teacher, with a goal as practical as possible, namely to initiate and smooth the way toward the student’s full understanding of the mathematics taught in school. The customary procedural-formal approach to teaching mathematics has resulted in students’ distorted vision of mathematics as a merely formal, instrumental, and computational discipline. Without the conceptual base of mathematics, students develop over time a “mathematical anxiety” and abandon any effort to understand mathematics, which becomes their “traditional enemy” in school. This work materializes the results of the inter- and trans-disciplinary research aimed toward the understanding of mathematics, which concluded that the fields with the potential to contribute to mathematics education in this respect, by unifying the procedural and conceptual approaches, are epistemology and philosophy of mathematics and science, as well as fundamentals and history of mathematics. These results argue that students’ fear of mathematics can be annulled through a conceptual approach, and a student with a good conceptual understanding will be a better problem solver. The author has identified those zones and concepts from the above disciplines that can be adapted and processed for familiarizing the student with this type of knowledge, which should accompany the traditional content of school mathematics. The work was organized so as to create for the reader a unificatory image of the complex nature of mathematics, as well as a conceptual perspective ultimately necessary to the holistic understanding of school mathematics. The author talks about mathematics to convince readers that to understand mathematics means first to understand it as a whole, but also as part of a whole. The nature of mathematics, its primary concepts (like numbers and sets), its structures, language, methods, roles, and applicability, are all presented in their essential content, and the explanation of non-mathematical concepts is done in an accessible language and with many relevant examples.
Mathematics Problems with Separate Progressive Solutions: Hints, Algorithms, Proofs. Volume 1 - Intermediate and College Algebra
Authors: Cătălin Bărboianu, Evgheni Tokarev; ISBN 9789731991009; Publisher: PhilScience Press; 124 pag.
The problem-solving assumes theoretical and analytical skills, as well as algorithmic skills, coupled with a basic mathematical intuition. The concept of this problem book successfully supports the development of these skills of the solver and meanwhile offers mathematics instructors models for teaching problem-solving as an integral part of the mathematics learning process.
The topics of the problems belong to algebra II and algebra of the first two years of college, passing through fields of integer and real numbers, equations, inequalities, powers, logarithms, divisibility, polynomials, and combinatorics.
The level of difficulty of the problems is specific to school contests.
The problem book is structured in four separate and independent sections, namely Problems, Hints, Algorithms, and Proofs, in this order. The sections described previously are separated in this book so that the solver can explore the problem and search for solving paths independently, consulting the next section only when he or she has exhausted, with no success, his or her own approach and individual study methods.
As the solver moves progressively from a partial solution to a more complete one, this additional effort itself becomes a useful mathematical exercise. Moreover, the process of moving successively through the indications of the problems together with individual investigation and autocorrection of a wrong approach, stimulates and motivates the solver toward a solution. All these elements give this type of problem book a truly interactive character.
Check other books of school mathematics, applied mathematics, and philosophy of mathematics published by PhilScience Press.