From Protoquantities to Operators: building mathematical competence on a Foundation of Everyday Knowledge

Author(s):  
Lauren Β. Resnick
2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Daniel Strassberg

The insight that human beings are prone to deceive themselves is part of our everyday knowledge of human nature. Even so, if deceiving someone means to deliberately misrepresent something to him, it is difficult to understand how it is possible to deceive yourself. This paper tries to address this difficulty by means of a narrative approach. Self-deception is conceived as a change of the narrative context by means of which the same fact appears in a different light. On these grounds, depending on whether the self-deceiver adopts an ironic attitude to his self-deception or not, it is also possible to distinguish between a morally inexcusable self-deception and a morally indifferent one.


Author(s):  
Xiaoyue Li

Abstract This article examines banditry, embezzlement, and other insider crimes along Egyptian railway lines during a period when British officials exerted centralized control over the Egyptian railway and financial austerity had a negative impact on the rail sector. By exploring the motives and tactics of railway crimes, I posit that criminals, by making claims on and use of the technology outside the purview of state regulations, expressed their heterogeneous desires to redistribute social wealth, repurpose the technological promise of modern railways, and confound intentions of colonial governance. Using new archival materials, this article utilizes a bottom-up approach to examine grassroots activism, everyday knowledge, informal networks, and the social mores and norms that criminals harnessed to discern infrastructural vulnerabilities and elude surveillance from the colonial state. Ultimately, I contend that criminal acts uncovered social crises otherwise hidden under the shadow of the exterior prosperity and stability of late 19th-century Egypt.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-25
Author(s):  
Maria Jose Albert ◽  
Manuel Blazquez-Merino ◽  
Africa Lopez-Rey ◽  
Manuel Castro

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Michaela A. Meier ◽  
Julia A. Burgstaller ◽  
Mathias Benedek ◽  
Stephan E. Vogel ◽  
Roland H. Grabner

Mathematical creativity is perceived as an increasingly important aspect of everyday life and, consequently, research has increased over the past decade. However, mathematical creativity has mainly been investigated in children and adolescents so far. Therefore, the first goal of the current study was to develop a mathematical creativity measure for adults (MathCrea) and to evaluate its reliability and construct validity in a sample of 100 adults. The second goal was to investigate how mathematical creativity is related to intelligence, mathematical competence, and general creativity. The MathCrea showed good reliability, and confirmatory factor analysis confirmed that the data fitted the assumed theoretical model, in which fluency, flexibility, and originality constitute first order factors and mathematical creativity a second order factor. Even though intelligence, mathematical competence, and general creativity were positively related to mathematical creativity, only numerical intelligence and general creativity predicted unique variance of mathematical creativity. Additional analyses separating quantitative and qualitative aspects of mathematical creativity revealed differential relationships to intelligence components and general creativity. This exploratory study provides first evidence that intelligence and general creativity are important predictors for mathematical creativity in adults, whereas mathematical competence seems to be not as important for mathematical creativity in adults as in children.


1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan A. Lawson

Many universities admit students to degree courses in mechanical engineering from a wide variety of backgrounds. The majority enter with a study of A level mathematics. An increasing proportion enter having previously studied for BTEC qualifications. The conventional rule of thumb which is used is that BTEC level 3 is equivalent to A level. In this paper this rule of thumb is examined by comparing the performance of A level and BTEC students in a diagnostic test, taken at the start of their course, and the results of the end-of-year examination. The results of students entering the mechanical engineering stream of degree courses at Coventry University in 1991 and 1992 are used to provide the data for this study. The diagnostic test results also show the key areas of weakness in the level of mathematical competence of many students on entry to universities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 89 (5) ◽  
pp. 1467-1484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Schneider ◽  
Simon Merz ◽  
Johannes Stricker ◽  
Bert De Smedt ◽  
Joke Torbeyns ◽  
...  

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