Abstract
This paper suggests that consistently referring to variables as placeholders is an effective countermeasure for addressing a number of the difficulties students’ encounter in learning mathematics. The suggestion is supported by examples discussing ways in which variables are used to express unknown quantities, define functions and express other universal statements, and serve as generic elements in mathematical discourse. In addition, making greater use of the term “dummy variable” and phrasing statements both with and without variables may help students avoid mistakes that result from misinterpreting the scope of a bound variable.
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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Epp, S.S. (2011). Variables in Mathematics Education. In: Blackburn, P., van Ditmarsch, H., Manzano, M., Soler-Toscano, F. (eds) Tools for Teaching Logic. TICTTL 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6680. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21350-2_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21350-2_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-21349-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-21350-2
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