• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.26 no.1
• /
• pp.99-113
• /
• 2006

In this study, Korean middle school student science achievement results in the "Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study" (TIMSS 2003) were analyzed according to international benchmarks, content area, gender and student attitudes toward science. Overall Korea ranked the third internationally and had a mean score of 558. Korean students achieved top ranking in physics, but fell to the ninth place in chemistry. Unliked their counter parts in similar countries such as Singapore and Chinese Taipei, Korean students did not reach the highest benchmark. Compared to previous assessment, Korean girls showed improved performance; however, significant gender differences still exist in Korea; apparent from the better performance of boys than girls in the study. It is also noteworthy that Korean students were found to have the lowest self-confidence in learning science, a lower valuing science, and less enjoying learning science even though they produced high achievement scores.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
• /
• v.35 no.4
• /
• pp.425-444
• /
• 2021

In this study, under the assumption that the goal pursued in measurement area can be reached through the composition of the measurement activity considering the mathematical process, the method of summing the interior angles of a triangle using the measurement error was applied to the 4th grade class of the elementary school. Results of the study, first, students were able to recognize the possibility of measurement error by learning the sum of the interior angles of a triangle using the measurement error. Second, the discussion process based on the measurement error became the basis for students to attempt mathematical justification. Third, the manipulation activity using the semicircle was recognized as a natural and intuitive way of mathematical justification by the students and led to generalization. Fourth, the method of guiding the sum of the interior angles of a triangle using the measurement error contributed to the development of students' mathematical communication skills and positive attitudes toward mathematics.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.403-430
• /
• 2011

The purpose of the study was to investigate how the use of graphing calculators influence on forming students' mathematical concept of algebra, students' mathematical connection, and attitude toward mathematics. First, graphing calculators give instant feedback to students as they make students compare their written answers with the results, which helps students learn equations and linear inequalities for themselves. In respect of quadratic inequalities they help students to correct wrong concepts and understand fundamental concepts, and with regard to functions students can draw graphs more easily using graphing calculators, which means that the difficulty of drawing graphs can not be hindrance to student's learning functions. Moreover students could understand functions intuitively by using graphing calculators and explored math problems volunteerly. As a result, students were able to perceive faster the concepts of functions that they considered difficult and remain the concepts in their mind for a long time. Second, most of students could not think of connection among equations, equalities and functions. However, they could understand the connection among equations, equalities and functions more easily. Additionally students could focus on changing the real life into the algebraic expression by modeling without the fear of calculating, which made students relieve the burden of calculating and realize the usefulness of mathematics through the experience of solving the real-life problems. Third, we identified the change of six students' attitude through preliminary and an ex post facto attitude test. Five of six students came to have positive attitude toward mathematics, but only one student came to have negative attitude. However, all of the students showed positive attitude toward using graphing calculators in math class. That's because they could have more interest in mathematics by the strengthened and visualization of graphing calculators which helped them understand difficult algebraic concepts, which gave them a sense of achievement. Also, students could relieve the burden of calculating and have confidence. In a conclusion, using graphing calculators in algebra and function class has many advantages : formulating mathematics concepts, mathematical connection, and enhancing positive attitude toward mathematics. Therefore we need more research of the effect of using calculators, practical classroom materials, instruction models and assessment tools for graphing calculators. Lastly We need to make the classroom environment more adequate for using graphing calculators in math classes.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.48 no.1
• /
• pp.47-62
• /
• 2024

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of classes using AlgeoMath on fifth grade elementary students' mathematical problem-solving skills and mathematical attitudes. For this purpose, the 'cuboid' section of the 5th grade elementary textbook based on AlgeoMath was reorganized. A total of 8 experimental classes were conducted using this teaching and learning material. And the quantitative data collected before and after the experimental lesson were statistically analyzed. In addition, by presenting instances of experimental lessons using AlgeoMath, we investigated the effectiveness and reality of classes using engineering in terms of mathematical problem-solving ability and attitude. The results of this study are as follows. First, in the mathematical problem-solving ability test, there was a significant difference between the experimental group and the comparison group at the significance level. In other words, lessons using AlgeoMath were found to be effective in increasing mathematical problem-solving skills. Second, in the mathematical attitude test, there was no significant difference between the experimental group and the comparison group at the significance level. However, the average score of the experimental group was found to be higher than that of the comparison group for all sub-elements of mathematical attitude.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
• /
• v.24 no.2
• /
• pp.233-253
• /
• 2014

Can the stock market really be predicted? Stock market prediction has attracted much attention from many fields including business, economics, statistics, and mathematics. Early research on stock market prediction was based on random walk theory (RWT) and the efficient market hypothesis (EMH). According to the EMH, stock market are largely driven by new information rather than present and past prices. Since it is unpredictable, stock market will follow a random walk. Even though these theories, Schumaker [2010] asserted that people keep trying to predict the stock market by using artificial intelligence, statistical estimates, and mathematical models. Mathematical approaches include Percolation Methods, Log-Periodic Oscillations and Wavelet Transforms to model future prices. Examples of artificial intelligence approaches that deals with optimization and machine learning are Genetic Algorithms, Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Neural Networks. Statistical approaches typically predicts the future by using past stock market data. Recently, financial engineers have started to predict the stock prices movement pattern by using the SNS data. SNS is the place where peoples opinions and ideas are freely flow and affect others' beliefs on certain things. Through word-of-mouth in SNS, people share product usage experiences, subjective feelings, and commonly accompanying sentiment or mood with others. An increasing number of empirical analyses of sentiment and mood are based on textual collections of public user generated data on the web. The Opinion mining is one domain of the data mining fields extracting public opinions exposed in SNS by utilizing data mining. There have been many studies on the issues of opinion mining from Web sources such as product reviews, forum posts and blogs. In relation to this literatures, we are trying to understand the effects of SNS exposures of firms on stock prices in Korea. Similarly to Bollen et al. [2011], we empirically analyze the impact of SNS exposures on stock return rates. We use Social Metrics by Daum Soft, an SNS big data analysis company in Korea. Social Metrics provides trends and public opinions in Twitter and blogs by using natural language process and analysis tools. It collects the sentences circulated in the Twitter in real time, and breaks down these sentences into the word units and then extracts keywords. In this study, we classify firms' exposures in SNS into two groups: positive and negative. To test the correlation and causation relationship between SNS exposures and stock price returns, we first collect 252 firms' stock prices and KRX100 index in the Korea Stock Exchange (KRX) from May 25, 2012 to September 1, 2012. We also gather the public attitudes (positive, negative) about these firms from Social Metrics over the same period of time. We conduct regression analysis between stock prices and the number of SNS exposures. Having checked the correlation between the two variables, we perform Granger causality test to see the causation direction between the two variables. The research result is that the number of total SNS exposures is positively related with stock market returns. The number of positive mentions of has also positive relationship with stock market returns. Contrarily, the number of negative mentions has negative relationship with stock market returns, but this relationship is statistically not significant. This means that the impact of positive mentions is statistically bigger than the impact of negative mentions. We also investigate whether the impacts are moderated by industry type and firm's size. We find that the SNS exposures impacts are bigger for IT firms than for non-IT firms, and bigger for small sized firms than for large sized firms. The results of Granger causality test shows change of stock price return is caused by SNS exposures, while the causation of the other way round is not significant. Therefore the correlation relationship between SNS exposures and stock prices has uni-direction causality. The more a firm is exposed in SNS, the more is the stock price likely to increase, while stock price changes may not cause more SNS mentions.