What is Mathematical Thinking and why is it important?
What is Mathematical Thinking Mathematical thinking is a lot more than just being able to do arithmetic or solve algebra problems. It is a whole way of looking at things, stripping them down to their essentials, whether it’s numerical, structural or logical and then analyzing the underlying patterns. Math is about patterns. When we are teaching a mathematical method, we are showing something that happens all the time, something that happens in general. Getting students to see these underlying structures, whether it’s in a math problem, in society, or in nature, is one of the reasons that studying mathematics is so worthwhile. It transforms math from drudgery to artistry. Identified four fundamental processes, in two pairs, and showed how thinking mathematically very often proceeds by alternating between them: Specializing – trying special cases, looking at examples Generalizing - looking for patterns and relationships Conjecturing – predicting relationships and results C