Comparison of First Year University Mathematics Syllabuses: A Report on Behalf of the Universities and Schools Committee

1972 ◽  
Vol 56 (395) ◽  
pp. 2-4
Author(s):  
S. L. Parsonson

From its formation to the present time, one of the major concerns of the Committee has been the identification of a common core of mathematical knowledge that pupils with one or two A-levels in mathematics could, and should, be expected to possess. The ‘Core Syllabus in Pure Mathematics’ (published by the Association in 1968 with the support of the Schools Council) was one outcome of that concern. The first report is currently being revised, along with a companion report on Applied Mathematics (and Mathematics Applied).

2003 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 561-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. M. Stokes

AbstractTo assess rotational deformity in a broken forearm, an orthopaedic surgeon needs to determine the amount of rotation of the radius from one or more two-dimensional x-rays of the fracture. This requires only simple first-year university mathematics — rotational transformations of ellipses plus a little differential calculus — which yields a general formula giving the rotation angle from information obtained from an x-ray. Preliminary comparisons with experimental results are excellent. This is a practical problem that may be useful to motivate the teaching of conic sections.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odd Petter Sand ◽  
Elise Lockwood ◽  
Marcos D. Caballero ◽  
Knut Mørken

We present here the lessons learned by iteratively designing a tutorial for first-year university students using computer programming to work with mathematical models. Alternating between design and implementation, we used video-taped task interviews and classroom observations to ensure that the design promoted student understanding. The final version of the tutorial we present here has students make their own logarithm function from scratch, using Taylor polynomials. To ensure that the resulting function is accurate and reasonably fast, the students have to understand and apply concepts from both computing and mathematics. We identify four categories of such concepts and identify three design features that students attended to when demonstrating such understandings. Additionally, we describe seven important take-aways from a teaching design point of view that resulted from this iterative design process.


1976 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 10-70 ◽  

Introduction The authors of this jointly written memoir divided its writing between them, one (H. S. W. M.) writing of the life, the other (N. F.) of the scientific work of its subject. Obviously, these two aspects cannot wholly be separated; inevitably some degree of overlap must remain in the two accounts. It is hoped that the reader will be indulgent: at least, every effort has been made to reduce mere repetition to a minimum. Early career— up to the end of World War I James Chadwick was born at Bollington near Macclesfield on 20 October 1891. He had two brothers, and one sister who died at an early age. When his father left the countryside to establish a laundry business in Manchester, Chadwick stayed on with his grandmother and received his primary education at the local school. He showed early aptitude for scholarship but it was not financially possible to send him to Manchester Grammar School for further education. Instead he went to Manchester Municipal Secondary School where the teaching was very good. In the first year at Secondary School he took a wide range of subjects including science and mathematics. The only striking omission, at least for time, was Greek. This was a cause of some regret to Chadwick but, as he himself says, if he had taken Greek he might well have continued with the classics, rather than with science. As time went on he became particularly interested in mathematics and physics though not especially so in chemistry. He was much encouraged by a sixth form master, Mr Wolfenden, to specialize in mathematics and it was his main interest at the time, especially applied mathematics.


Author(s):  
George Kinnear ◽  
Max Bennett ◽  
Rachel Binnie ◽  
Róisín Bolt ◽  
Yinglan Zheng

Abstract The MATH taxonomy classifies questions according to the mathematical skills required to answer them. It was created to aid the development of more balanced assessments in undergraduate mathematics and has since been used to compare different assessment regimes across school and university. To date, there has been no systematic investigation of the reliability of the taxonomy when applied by multiple coders, and it has only been applied in a limited range of contexts. In this paper, we outline a calibration process which enabled four novice coders to attain a high level of inter-rater reliability. In addition, we report on the results of applying the taxonomy to different secondary school exams and to all assessment questions in a first-year university mathematics module. The results confirm previous findings that there is a difference between the mix of skills assessed in school and university mathematics exams, although we find a notably different assessment profile in the university module than in previous work. The calibration process we describe has the potential to be used more widely, enabling reliable use of the MATH taxonomy to give insight into assessment practices.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document