Analyzing students’ difficulties in understanding real numbers

This article reports on a study of high-school and of technologist students (prospective engineers and economists) understanding of real numbers. Our study was based on written response to a properly designed questionnaire and on interviews taken from students. The quantitative results of our experiment showed an almost complete failure of the technologist students to deal with processes connected to geometric constructions of incommensurable magnitudes. However, this didn’t prevent them in answering satisfactorily the other questions. The superiority of their correct answers with respect to those of high-school students, although the majority of them correspond to mediocre graduates of the secondary education, was evident in most cases. This is a strong indication that the age and the width of mathematical knowledge of the individual play an important role for the better understanding of the real numbers. The results of our experiment suggest also that the ability to transfer in comfort among several representations of real numbers helps students in obtaining a better understanding of them. A theoretical explanation about this is obtained through the adoption of the conceptual framework of dimensions of knowledge, introduced by Tirosh et al. (1998) for studying the comprehension of rational numbers. Following in part the idea of generic decomposition of the APOS analysis (Weller et al. 2009) we suggest a possible order for development of understanding the real numbers by students when teaching them at school. Some questions open to further research are also mentioned at the end of the paper. Keywords: Real, rational, irrational, algebraic and transcendental numbers, fractions, decimals, representations of real numbers.Abstract This article reports on a study of high-school and of technologist students (prospective engineers and economists) understanding of real numbers. Our study was based on written response to a properly designed questionnaire and on interviews taken from students. The quantitative results of our experiment showed an almost complete failure of the technologist students to deal with processes connected to geometric constructions of incommensurable magnitudes. However, this didn’t prevent them in answering satisfactorily the other questions. The superiority of their correct answers with respect to those of high-school students, although the majority of them correspond to mediocre graduates of the secondary education, was evident in most cases. This is a strong indication that the age and the width of mathematical knowledge of the individual play an important role for the better understanding of the real numbers. The results of our experiment suggest also that the ability to transfer in comfort among several representations of real numbers helps students in obtaining a better understanding of them. A theoretical explanation about this is obtained through the adoption of the conceptual framework of dimensions of knowledge, introduced by Tirosh et al. (1998) for studying the comprehension of rational numbers. Following in part the idea of generic decomposition of the APOS analysis (Weller et al. 2009) we suggest a possible order for development of understanding the real numbers by students when teaching them at school. Some questions open to further research are also mentioned at the end of the paper. Keywords: Real, rational, irrational, algebraic and transcendental numbers, fractions, decimals, representations of real numbers