Capturing and communicating advanced mathematical activity

Abstract

Unlike most other subjects, mathematical activity resides almost entirely within the cognitive processes of a mathematics practitioner and is therefore difficult to characterise. Despite recent interest, the nature of advanced mathematical activity remains something of a black box to educational researchers. In addition, the production of advanced mathematical texts, such as theses or journal articles, is often divorced from mathematicians’ experiences of creating mathematics which can lead them to a sense of personal alienation from their work. This article proposes four practical techniques for capturing advanced mathematical activity. The timing of the use of these techniques is compared against a model of mathematical creativity and the writing process. The establishment of a new genre for communicating advanced mathematics is proposed which combines the product of the activity with the process of creating it.

Keywords

• mathematical creativity
• advanced mathematical activity
• mathematical writing
• data capturing techniques
• mathematical activity corpus