Electronic Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics

Chicago, Illinois, October 30-November 2, 2003

Paper S104

This is an electronic reprint, reproduced by permission of Pearson Education Inc. Originally appeared in the Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics, Edited by Corinna Mansfield, ISBN 0-321-30456-x, Copyright (C) 2005 by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc.


Can Technology Help Predict the Dynamics of Student Attitudes Toward Mathematics?

Zaur Berkaliev


California State University Fresno
5245 North Backer Avenue M/S PB108
Fresno, CA 93740
USA

Click to access this paper: paper.pdf

ABSTRACT

This paper demonstrates that the dynamical system of college student attitudes toward mathematics provides complex irregular nonlinear patterns similar to patterns provided by strange attractors. The major features of such dynamics are unpredictability and instability, which might not be a result of measurement error, but the very nature of the phenomenon.

Keyword(s): statistics, chaos and fractals, software, dynamical systems