• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.21 no.2 s.30
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• pp.125-152
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• 2007

When we teach mathematics in college, we find a lot of mistakes, fallacies and flaws in the solution of the students. In this paper, we presented a variety of examples of mistakes and fallacies, including wrong proofs, misinterpreted definitions and the mistaken use of theory. The examples, taken from different classes and subjects, are based on our own experience of teaching mathematics. As the previous research argued, such mistakes, fallacies and flaws should be considered as natural phenomena in the students' progress and should be analyzed systematically for the more effective education. By providing a wide-ranging examples of mistakes and fallacies, and detailed analyses of them, we emphasized the significance of the analysis of mistakes and fallacies and proposed that more careful attention should be paid on the collection and development of teaching materials in the area of mistake and fallacy analysis. We hope that this study would be a meaningful contribution to the teaching of mathematics in college.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.277-293
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• 2011

The purpose of mathematics education is to develop the ability of transforming various problems in general situations into mathematics problems and then solving the problem mathematically. Various teaching-learning methods for improving the ability of the mathematics problem-solving can be tried. However, it is necessary to choose an appropriate teaching-learning method after figuring out students' level of understanding the mathematics learning or their problem-solving strategies. The error analysis is helpful for mathematics learning by providing teachers more efficient teaching strategies and by letting students know the cause of failure and then find a correct way. The following subjects were set up and analyzed. First, the error classification pattern was set up. Second, the errors in the solving process of the function problems were analyzed according to the error classification pattern. For this study, the survey was conducted to 90 first grade students of ${\bigcirc}{\bigcirc}$high school in Chung-nam. They were asked to solve 8 problems in the function part. The following error classification patterns were set up by referring to the preceding studies about the error and the error patterns shown in the survey. (1)Misused Data, (2)Misinterpreted Language, (3)Logically Invalid Inference, (4)Distorted Theorem or Definition, (5)Unverified Solution, (6)Technical Errors, (7)Discontinuance of solving process The results of the analysis of errors due to the above error classification pattern were given below First, students don't understand the concept of the function completely. Even if they do, they lack in the application ability. Second, students make many mistakes when they interpret the mathematics problem into different types of languages such as equations, signals, graphs, and figures. Third, students misuse or ignore the data given in the problem. Fourth, students often give up or never try the solving process. The research on the error analysis should be done further because it provides the useful information for the teaching-learning process.