• School Mathematics
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.371-388
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• 2010

The goals of this study are to inquire middle school students' understanding about prime number and to propose pedagogical implications for school mathematics. Written questionnaire were given to 198 Korean seventh graders who had just finished learning about prime number and prime factorization and then 20 students participated in individual interviews for member checks. In defining prime and composite numbers, the students focused on distinguishing one from another by numbering of factors of agiven natural number. However, they hardly recognize the mathematical connection between prime and composite numbers related on the multiplicative structure of natural number. This study suggests that it is needed to emphasize the conceptual relationship between divisibility and prime decomposition and the prime numbers as the multiplicative building blocks of natural numbers based on the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.

• Journal for History of Mathematics
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.67-82
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• 2009

We study Choi Suk Jung's on perspective of philosophy of mathematics. He explains Chosun mathematics as systems of Changes through and redefines on So Kang Gul's Sasang theory. This is the unique view on Chosun mathematics. we conjecture that Choi Suk Jung tries to establish the mathematical principle on So Kang Gul's Sasang theory.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.255-273
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• 2019

In order to help students to understand the essence of prime concepts, this study looked at the history of prime concept development and analyzed how to introduce the concept of textbooks. In ancient Greece, primes were multiplicative atoms. At that time, the unit was not a number, but the development of decimal representations led to the integration of the unit into the number, which raised the issue of primality of 1. Based on the uniqueness of factorization into prime factor, 1 was excluded from the prime, and after that, the concept of prime of the atomic context and the irreducible concept of the divisor context are established. The history of the development of prime concepts clearly reveals that the fact that prime is the multiplicative atom is the essence of the concept. As a result of analyzing the textbooks, the textbook has problems of not introducing the concept essence by introducing the concept of prime into a shaped perspectives or using game, and the problem that the transition to analytic concept definition is radical after the introduction of the concept. Based on the results of the analysis, we have provided several pedagogical implications for helping to focus on a conceptual aspect of prime number.