We consider a variety of writing assignments used for two general education mathematics courses. The student writing ranges from brief informal pieces to more formal assignments that address the full scope of a course, with an emphasis on encouraging students to have a richer experience of mathematical people and ideas and of their own learning.…

In many post-secondary, introductory mathematics courses failure and withdrawal rates are reaching as high as 50% and average GPA is steadily decreasing. This is a problem that has been witnessed across the globe. With widespread reforms taking place in K-12 mathematics education, many innovative teaching strategies have been created, implemented,…

This article describes an applet that facilitates investigation of Simpson's Paradox in the context of a number of real and hypothetical data sets. The applet builds on the Baker-Kramer graphical representation for Simpson's Paradox. The implementation and use of the applet are explained. This is followed by a description of how the applet has…

We present a study of classroom voting in linear algebra, in which the instructors posed multiple-choice questions to the class and then allowed a few minutes for consideration and small-group discussion. After each student in the class voted on the correct answer using a classroom response system, a set of clickers, the instructor then guided a…

Much of what is taught, especially in college, is designed to support other disciplines. To determine the current mathematical needs of twenty-three partner disciplines, the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) conducted the Curriculum Foundations Project (Ganter and Barker 2004; Ganter and Haver 2011), as discussed in the appendix…

Dublin Institute of Technology offers students a number of different routes into engineering, allowing many non-standard entrants the opportunity to study the discipline provided they fulfil certain criteria. The final aim of many of these students is to achieve an Honours Degree in Engineering, which takes a minimum of 4 years. Apart from the…

The present research investigated whether real-world application exercises promoted students' abilities to spontaneously transfer statistical knowledge and to recognize the use of statistics in real-world contexts. Over the course of a semester of psychological statistics, two classes completed multiple application exercises designed to mimic…

Undergraduate statistics courses are perceived as challenging by both students and instructors. Students' attitudes, motivation, math anxiety, and preparedness can negatively impact the student and instructor experience and have the potential to negatively impact student learning. This article describes an attempt to address some of these…

Our ability to statistically analyze data has grown significantly with the maturing of computer hardware and software. However, the evolution of our statistics capabilities has taken place without a corresponding evolution in the curriculum for the undergraduate chemistry major. Most faculty understands the need for a statistical educational…

This article presents activities appropriate for the first half of a general introductory statistics course. All activities revolve around the same data set collected early in the course. The activities require students to make decisions about how they should proceed. (Contains 2 tables and 5 figures.)

This paper examines "resilience" of mathematics students in transition from a sociocultural perspective, in which resilience is viewed as relational and in particular as a function of the social and cultural capital students may bring to the new field. We draw on two students' stories of transition, in which we recognise elements…

The Precalculus Mega Section project was developed with the main purpose of improving the overall performance of the student body in Precalculus, an important gatekeeper course that affects student engagement and completion, with typical drop/failure rates of over 50 percent. Strategies such as integration of technology and additional practice…

I present a unit on voting theory and social choice taught as the beginning of a liberal arts mathematics course for undergraduates. In this unit, students voted on the final grade calculation formula and topics to cover during the semester and then analyzed the results using various voting systems. I believe that by allowing my students to…

To implement the developmental mathematics redesign, this author's College partnered with two public school systems to establish early placement testing and a capstone readiness course, to be administered in the high school students' senior year.

Barbanel, Brams, and Stromquist (in 2009) asked whether there exists a two-person moving-knife procedure that yields an envy-free, undominated, and equitable division of a pie. We present two procedures: One yields an envy-free, almost undominated, and almost equitable allocation, whereas the second yields an allocation with the two "almost"…