Welcome to MAA-Wisconsin Spring 2010 Meeting!
Jennifer Szydlik (UW-Oshkosh)
Teaching to Inspire Mathematical Thinking
Slides from Dr. Szydlik's Talk
Our community, the mathematical community, holds a set of values, mathematical tools, and distinctions about language that support us in learning new mathematics and in solving problems. We value precise definitions of objects, elegant arguments, and shared notations. We use logic, create examples, non examples, and counterexamples, consider extreme or trivial cases, and make models for problems. We distinguish necessary from sufficient conditions, pay close attention to quantifiers, and are sticklers for language. This is our culture. I advocate for making this culture transparent to our students both in the ways we speak about mathematics and in the ways we do mathematics with them in class. In this presentation I will talk about how we might do both, and I will provide samples of problems and activities that inspire mathematical thinking.
Jennifer Szydlik earned her
Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1995. She then
joined the faculty at the