Student’s Understanding of Infinity

Abstract

The idea of infinity is one of the most interesting and fundamental abstract concepts we have in mathematics, and it has been studied by philosophers, theologians and mathematicians for many centuries. Our current research question is to study how well students at various levels understand infinity, have they achieved their understanding and if they can manipulate and compare infinite sets and their subsets. We aim to compare the different options for understanding infinity that university students have and their ability to deal with contexts that require recognizing and comparing sets with various infinite elements. We designed a survey that included questions regarding the timeline for development of some of the concepts in the minds of participants, checked understanding of useful definitions, as well as asked them to perform some actions related to infinite sets (both countable and uncountable). We collected the answers and using statistical tools analyzed the answers finding interesting differences between groups of participants at different levels of mathematical development.

Details

Session 2

3:00pm – 4:30pm

Grand Salon