The Validation of a Semantic Model for the Interpretation of Mathematics in an Applied Mathematics Problem

The semantic model proposed by Peters (2008) was developed whilst working with learners of mathematics solving algebraic problems. In order to investigate in more detail the role of the parsing process and its relationship to the lexicon, a different set of questions were devised based on Laurillard’s (2002) work with undergraduate students. These same questions were also given to a set of mathematics tutors so that a comparison could be made between the two groups and to see if their behaviour could be explained using the semantic model. The analysis of these sets of data indeed show the importance of the parsing process and as predicted by the model, a competent mathematician employs a top-down parsing strategy