Premium
Analysis of Concatenations and Order of Operations in Written Mathematics
Author(s) -
Lee Mary A.,
Messner Shelley J.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
school science and mathematics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.135
H-Index - 2
eISSN - 1949-8594
pISSN - 0036-6803
DOI - 10.1111/j.1949-8594.2000.tb17254.x
Subject(s) - numeral system , emphasis (telecommunications) , decimal , symbol (formal) , mathematics , arithmetic , order (exchange) , integer (computer science) , algorithm , algebra over a field , computer science , linguistics , pure mathematics , programming language , telecommunications , finance , economics , philosophy
Concatenations in written mathematics are the positioning of symbols next to each other to imply an operation without a symbol for the operation. Concatenations have been identified in previous research as an obstacle to understanding, or a cognitive difficulty, in the learning of algebra. The additive inverse symbol with concatenations poses questions not addressed by the usual conventions for order of operations. In this study, texts of grades 6 through 9 were surveyed, and quantitative and qualitative analyses were made of the instructional emphasis on selected concatenations. Results indicated much curricular emphasis on unsigned (without negative signs) numeral forms and integer, as compared to minimal curricular emphasis on signed (with negative signs) fraction, mixed number, decimal, and exponent numeral forms. A recommendation is to increase curricular emphasis on signed numeral forms and to include the additive inverse unary operation in the conventional order of operations.