A student’s modeling of a business problem: a case representaticve of students’ struggle to see meaning in mathematics
Teaching Mathematics and Its Applications
Volume 25 Issue 3
Abstract
This article analyzes the modeling approach used by one student in a business problem. It is argued that if we use previous frameworks we are not able to classify the students’ approach to modeling as purely theoretical or empirical. Instead the student used a theoretical approach when constructing a real model, but abandoned it when she had to create a mathematical model. Reasons for this shift seem to be: greater familiarity with real-world concepts than with mathematical concepts; lack of appreciation of how mathematics could help understand or solve the problem; and discredit in the usefulness of mathematics for solving real problems.
This article does a good job highlighting an aspect of the teaching of mathematics: that of the mathematical model. Often we focus on the techniques involved in solving problems (even real world problems presented in story form in our text books), but seldom in my career as a student of mathematics, and never in my career as a professor of mathematics at a community college have I encountered problems in which students were required to build a mathematical model from scratch. It takes a very particular kind of thinking, one I would argue is more natural to scientists than to mathematicians, to build models of real world situations using mathematics.
The article examines the student’s approach to modeling a situation relating to her job, then goes on to address aspects of the modeling process that the student seems to have missed. Namely, a validation of the model, once constructed, by considering its claims in relation to the real world situation. I was also amused to (once again) encounter a student who seems every problem as linear, despite the fact that a linear model is not necessarily the most viable mathematical structure. A decent, short, read. Nothing cutting edge or particularly enlightening.
