• 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 Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.31-49
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• 2009

Utilizing the mathematical materials in elementary mathematics education is known to increase the learners' creativity and interests for mathematics. Although the effects of mathematical materials have been frequently researched, a practical plan and a process to utilize the mathematical materials has been rarely researched. The dependence on the mathematical materials is tested by the students' responses to the mathematical problems in the class that allowed to use mathematical materials. The activities in the text book are reorganized to seven chapters for utilizing the mathematical materials. The dependence on the mathematical materials when solving the mathematical problems is investigated by the textbook, students' answers, and handouts. The conclusions of this study are: First of all, the activities using mathematical materials are reorganized within the mathematics education curriculum. The high interests are also investigated in all the learning level of learners. Second, the learners in the high learning level use the mathematical materials for their needs and the correction of their mistakes. The dependence on mathematical materials is lowest compared to the other level learners. Third, the learners in the mid learning level also use the mathematical materials for their needs and their mistakes, but are often confused when utilizing the materials. Fourth, the learners in the low learning level show their interests, and enthusiasm in the mathematical materials themselves. Their interests help to solve mathematical problems. The dependence on the materials is higher than the other level learners, but the dependence is not shown only for the low level learners.

• Bulletin of the Korean Mathematical Society
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.1909-1911
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• 2016

In this note we point out some mistakes in a recent paper by M. Nunokawa et al. [Bull. Korean Math. Soc. 53 (2016), no. 1, 215-225].

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.885-905
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• 2010

This study questions that mathematical evaluations strive to memorize fragmentary knowledge and have an objective test. To solve these problems on mathematical education We did descriptive test. Through the descriptive test, students think and express their ideas freely using mathematical terms. We want to know if that procedure is correct or not, and, if they understand what was being presented. We studied this because We want to analyze where and what kinds of faults they committed, and be able to correct an error so as to establish a correct mathematical concept. The result from this study can be summarized as the following; First, the mistakes students make when solving the descriptive tests can be divided into six things: error of question understanding, error of concept principle, error of data using, error of solving procedure, error of recording procedure, and solving procedure omissions. Second, students had difficulty with the part of the descriptive test that used logical thinking defined by mathematical terms. Third, errors pattern varied as did students' ability level. For high level students, there were a lot of cases of the solving procedure being correct, but simple calculations were not correct. There were also some mistakes due to some students' lack of concept understanding. For middle level students, they couldn't understand questions well, and they analyzed questions arbitrarily. They also have a tendency to solve questions using a wrong strategy with data that only they can understand. Low level students generally had difficulty understanding questions. Even when they understood questions, they couldn't derive the answers because they have a shortage of related knowledge as well as low enthusiasm on the subject.

• Bulletin of the Korean Mathematical Society
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• v.57 no.6
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• pp.1581-1590
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• 2020

In [1], there are some mistakes in calculations and solutions of differential equations and theorems that appeared in the paper. We here provide correct solutions and theorems.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.247-263
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• 2007

Problem solving takes place not only in mathematics classes but also in real-world. For this reason, a problem and the structure of problem solving, and the enhancing of success in problem solving is a subject which has been studied by any educators. In this direction, the aim of this study is that the strategy used by students in Turkey when solving oral problems and their achievements of choosing operations when solving oral problems has been researched. In the research, the students have been asked three types of questions made up groups of 5. In the first category, S-problems (standard problems not requiring to determine any strategy but can be easily solved with only the applications of arithmetical operations), in the second category, AS-SA problems (problems that can be solved with the key word of additive operation despite to its being a subtractive operation, and containing the key word of subtractive operation despite to its being an additive operation), and in the third category P-problems (problematic problem) take place. It is seen that students did not have so much difficulty in S-problems, mistakes were made in determining operations for problem solving because of memorizing certain essential concepts, and the succession rate of students is very low in P-problems. The reasons of these mistakes as a summary are given below: $\cdot$ Because of memorizing some certain key concepts about operations mistakes have been done in choosing operations. $\cdot$ Not giving place to problems which has no solution and with incomplete information in mathematics. $\cdot$ Thinking of students that every problem has a solution since they don't encounter every type of problems in mathematics classes and course books.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.39-51
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• 2002

This study described an elementary teacher's practical knowledge of selecting and using mathematical tasks for promoting students' understanding and discourse. The informant of this ethnographic inquiry was a third grade teacher and has 10 years of teaching experience. According to the analysis of multiple data sources, this study showed that based on his beliefs about the development of understanding of mathematics and discourse, he continually employed two different types of tasks: open-ended tasks and tasks from students' mistakes and comments during discourse. Teachers' practical knowledge of teaching mathematics and the classroom norms for students' understanding and discourse are suggested to be given attention for further research on this area.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.373-386
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• 2011

Students approach mathematical problem solving in fundamentally different ways, particularly problems requiring conceptual understanding and complicated strategies. The main objective of this study is to compare students' performance with different thinking styles (Field-dependent vs. Field independent) in mathematical problem solving. A sample of 242 high school males and females (17-18 years old) were tested based on the Witkin's cognitive style (Group Embedded Figure Test) and by a math exam designed in accordance with Bloom's Taxonomy of cognitive level. The results obtained indicated that the effect of field dependency on student's mathematical performance was significant. Moreover, field-independent (FI) students showed more effective performance than field-dependent (FD) ones in math tasks. Male students with FI styles achieved higher results compared to female students with FD cognitive style. Moreover, FI students experienced few difficulties than FD students in Bloom's Cognitive Levels. The implications of these results emphasize that cognitive predictor variables (FI vs. FD) could be challenging and rather distinctive factor for students' achievement.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.471-487
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• 2008

Inventive mathematical thinking, original mathematical problem solving ability, mathematical invention and so on are core concepts, which must be emphasized in all branches of mathematical education. In particular, Polya(1981) insisted that inventive thinking must be emphasized in a suitable level of university mathematical courses. In this paper, the author considered two cases of inventive problem solving ability shown by his many students via real analysis courses. The first case is about the proof of the problem "what is the derived set of the integers Z?" Nearly all books on mathematical analysis sent the question without the proof but some books said that the answer is "empty". Only one book written by Noh, Y. S.(2006) showed the proof by using the definition of accumulation points. But the proof process has some mistakes. But our student Kang, D. S. showed the perfect proof by using The Completeness Axiom, which is very useful in mathematical analysis. The second case is to show the infinite countability of NxN, which is shown by informal proof in many mathematical analysis books with formal proofs. Some students who argued the informal proof as an unreasonable proof were asked to join with us in finding the one-to-one correspondences between NxN and N. Many students worked hard and find two singled-valued mappings and one set-valued mapping covering eight diagrams in the paper. The problems are not easy and the proofs are a little complicated. All the proofs shown in this paper are original and right, so the proofs are deserving of inventive mathematical thoughts, original mathematical problem solving abilities and mathematical inventions. From the inventive proofs of his students, the author confirmed that any students can develope their mathematical abilities by their professors' encouragements.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2002.07a
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• pp.556-559
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• 2002

The Call Processing Language (CPL, in short), recommended in RFC 2824 of IETF, is a service description language for the Internet Telephony. The CPL allows users to define their own services, which dramatically improves the choice and flexibility of the users. The syntax of the CPL is strictly defined by DTD (Document Type Definition). However, compliance with the DTD is not a sufficient condition for correctness of a CPL script. There are enough rooms for non-expert users to make semantical mistakes in the service logic, which could lead to serious system down. In this paper, we present six classes of semantic warnings for the CPL service description: MF, IS, CR, AS, US, OS. For each class, we give the definition and its effects with an example script. These warnings are not necessarily errors. However, these warnings will help users to find ambiguity, redundancy and inconsistency in their own service description.