Abstract
Research has shown that students struggle with the abstraction of linear algebra and many remedies have been tried. Here I offer another idea to add to your arsenal. Instead of presenting linear algebra as a stand-alone subject, deduced logically from a founding set of axioms, maybe we could present it as a subject that evolves naturally from students’ experiences, either from prior contact with vectors in a physics course, or else from discussions and experiments designed to provoke a need to abstract, to generalize, to define and to prove.
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Notes
- 1.
The same idea occurs in more general senses in other chapters of this book. For example, Mercedes McGowen discusses how prior knowledge can support or impede new learning.
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Hannah, J. (2017). Why Does Linear Algebra Have to Be So Abstract?. In: Stewart, S. (eds) And the Rest is Just Algebra. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45053-7_11
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