• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.161-181
• /
• 2018

This study involved an investigation of prospective elementary teachers' preconceptions and experiences of diagrams and their ability to draw diagrams in solving math word problems. A questionnaire and two math word problems were administered to prospective elementary teachers who began to taking an introductory mathematics education course. The results from the analysis of their responses to the questionnaire items indicate that prospective elementary teachers appreciate the value of diagrams as tools for problem solving and communication. In addition, prospective elementary teachers have the will not only to teach their future students how to use diagrams but also to encourage them to draw diagrams in solving math word problems. However, the results also indicates that prospective elementary teachers neither use diagrams spontaneously in their math problem solving activities nor have confidence in drawing useful diagrams. Prospective elementary teachers also manifested low scores on the questionnaire items asking whether they were taught how to draw useful diagrams or encouraged by their teachers to use diagrams in their previous learning experiences. The results from the analysis of the diagrams that prospective elementary teachers drew in solving math word problems showed that most of them had difficulty drawing diagrams that represent their reasoning and solving process.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
• /
• v.14B no.1 s.111
• /
• pp.43-50
• /
• 2007

This study proposes design of courseware based on scaffolding for teaching math word problem solving of students with intellectual disabilities. This courseware not only offer various technological supports to solving difficult problems of students with intellectual disabilities but also systematically withdraw that supports. Compared with previous related softwares, this courseware has potential that can adapt math strategies to meet different needs of individuals with intellectual disabilities, increase independent learning ability of learners and maintain high level of motive through successful problem solving experience.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.159-175
• /
• 2010

In this paper we make a new problem solving model using the principle of the lever. Using the model we solved many word problems related with consistency. We suggest new problem solving method using the lever model and describe some characteristics of the method.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.14 no.12
• /
• pp.1083-1099
• /
• 2014

The purpose of this study is to analyze that The arithmetic and algebraic word problem solving skill, strategy preference, and assessment ability of elementary preservice teachers is investigated using a statistical methodology. The research findings are as follows. First, elementary preservice teachers demonstrated logical and delicate problem solving behaviors in arithmetic and algebraic word problem solving. And elementary preservice teachers prefer to create a formula and table strategy in problem solving of the arithmetic question. Second, there was meaningful difference in the math and english elementary preservice teachers' appreciations with significant level of 0.05. And there was not meaningful difference in the 1 and 4 grade elementary preservice teachers' appreciations with significant level of ${\alpha}=0.05$. Results of the study suggest that teachers education course need to improve elementary preservice teachers' word problem solving skill, strategy preference, and assessment ability in the arithmetic and algebraic.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
• /
• v.10 no.3
• /
• pp.353-367
• /
• 2007

The purpose of this study was to examine what errors students made in solving word problems with figures and to compare the problem-solving abilities of boys and girls for each type of word problems with figures. It's basically meant to provide information on effective teaching-learning methods about world problems with figures that were given the greatest weight among different sorts of word problems. The findings of the study were as fellows: First, there was no difference between the boys and girls in the types of error they made. Both groups made the most errors due to a poor understanding of sentences, and they made the least errors of making the wrong expression. And the students who gave no answers outnumbered those who made errors. Second, as for problem-solving ability, the boys outperformed the girls in problem solving except variable problems. There was the greatest gap between the two in solving combining problems. Third, they made the average or higher achievement in solving the types of problems that were included much in the textbooks, and made the least achievement in relation to the types of problems that were handled least often in the textbooks.

• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
• /
• v.11 no.8
• /
• pp.315-324
• /
• 2022

In this paper, we propose KoEPT, a Transformer-based generative model for automatic math word problems solving. A math word problem written in human language which describes everyday situations in a mathematical form. Math word problem solving requires an artificial intelligence model to understand the implied logic within the problem. Therefore, it is being studied variously across the world to improve the language understanding ability of artificial intelligence. In the case of the Korean language, studies so far have mainly attempted to solve problems by classifying them into templates, but there is a limitation in that these techniques are difficult to apply to datasets with high classification difficulty. To solve this problem, this paper used the KoEPT model which uses 'expression' tokens and pointer networks. To measure the performance of this model, the classification difficulty scores of IL, CC, and ALG514, which are existing Korean mathematical sentence problem datasets, were measured, and then the performance of KoEPT was evaluated using 5-fold cross-validation. For the Korean datasets used for evaluation, KoEPT obtained the state-of-the-art(SOTA) performance with 99.1% in CC, which is comparable to the existing SOTA performance, and 89.3% and 80.5% in IL and ALG514, respectively. In addition, as a result of evaluation, KoEPT showed a relatively improved performance for datasets with high classification difficulty. Through an ablation study, we uncovered that the use of the 'expression' tokens and pointer networks contributed to KoEPT's state of being less affected by classification difficulty while obtaining good performance.

• The Mathematical Education
• /
• v.50 no.3
• /
• pp.337-354
• /
• 2011

The purpose of the study was to investigate how students understand multiplication and division of fractions and how their understanding influences the solutions of fractional word problems. Thirteen students from 5th to 6th grades were involved in the study. Students' understanding of operations with fractions was categorized into "a part of the parts", "multiplicative comparison", "equal groups", "area of a rectangular", and "computational procedures of fractional multiplication (e.g., multiply the numerators and denominators separately)" for multiplications, and "sharing", "measuring", "multiplicative inverse", and "computational procedures of fractional division (e.g., multiply by the reciprocal)" for divisions. Most students understood multiplications as a situation of multiplicative comparison, and divisions as a situation of measuring. In addition, some students understood operations of fractions as computational procedures without associating these operations with the particular situations (e.g., equal groups, sharing). Most students tended to solve the word problems based on their semantic structure of these operations. Students with the same understanding of multiplication and division of fractions showed some commonalities during solving word problems. Particularly, some students who understood operations on fractions as computational procedures without assigning meanings could not solve word problems with fractions successfully compared to other students.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.599-624
• /
• 2009

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between error types and Polya's problem solving process. For doing this, we selected 106 sophomore students in a middle school and gave them algebra word problem test. With this test, we analyzed the students' error types in solving algebra word problems. First, We analyzed students' errors in solving algebra word problems into the following six error types. The result showed that the rate of student's errors in each type is as follows: "misinterpreted language"(39.7%), "distorted theorem or solution"(38.2%), "technical error"(11.8%), "unverified solution"(7.4%), "misused data"(2.9%) and "logically invalid inference"(0%). Therefore, we found that the most of student's errors occur in "misinterpreted language" and "distorted theorem or solution" types. According to the analysis of the relationship between students' error types and Polya's problem-solving process, we found that students who made errors of "misinterpreted language" and "distorted theorem or solution" types had some problems in the stage of "understanding", "planning" and "looking back". Also those who made errors of "unverified solution" type showed some problems in "planing" and "looking back" steps. Finally, errors of "misused data" and "technical error" types were related in "carrying out" and "looking back" steps, respectively.

• The Mathematical Education
• /
• v.47 no.4
• /
• pp.519-543
• /
• 2008

The study has been conducted with 29 children from 4th to 6th grades to realize how they understand addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers, and how their understanding influences solving of one-step word problems. Children's understanding of operations was categorized into "adding" and "combination" for additions, "taking away" and "comparison" for subtractions, "equal groups," "rectangular arrange," "ratio," and "Cartesian product" for multiplications, and "sharing," "measuring," "comparison," "ratio," "multiplicative inverse," and "repeated subtraction" for divisions. Overall, additions were mostly understood additions as "adding"(86.2%), subtractions as "taking away"(86.2%), multiplications as "equal groups"(100%), and divisions as "sharing"(82.8%). This result consisted with the Fischbein's intuitive models except for additions. Most children tended to solve the word problems based on their conceptual structure of the four arithmetic operations. Even though their conceptual structure of arithmetic operations helps to better solve problems, this tendency resulted in wrong solutions when problem situations were not related to their conceptual structure. Children in the same category of understanding for each operations showed some common features while solving the word problems. As children's understanding of operations significantly influences their solutions to word problems, they needs to be exposed to many different problem situations of the four arithmetic operations. Furthermore, the focus of teaching needs to be the meaning of each operations rather than computational algorithm.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.85-110
• /
• 2005

The purpose of this study is to examine the characteristics of visual representation used in problem solving process and examine the representation types the students used to successfully solve the problem and focus on systematizing the visual representation method using the condition students suggest in the problems. To achieve the goal of this study, following questions have been raised. (1) what characteristic does the representation the elementary school students used in the process of solving a math problem possess? (2) what types of representation did students use in order to successfully solve elementary math problem? 240 4th graders attending J Elementary School located in Seoul participated in this study. Qualitative methodology was used for data analysis, and the analysis suggested representation method the students use in problem solving process and then suggested the representation that can successfully solve five different problems. The results of the study as follow. First, the students are not familiar with representing with various methods in the problem solving process. Students tend to solve the problem using equations rather than drawing a diagram when they can not find a word that gives a hint to draw a diagram. The method students used to restate the problem was mostly rewriting the problem, and they could not utilize a table that is essential in solving the problem. Thus, various errors were found. Students did not simplify the complicated problem to find the pattern to solve the problem. Second, the image and strategy created as the problem was read and the affected greatly in solving the problem. The first image created as the problem was read made students to draw different diagram and make them choose different strategies. The study showed the importance of first image by most of the students who do not pass the trial and error step and use the strategy they chose first. Third, the students who successfully solved the problems do not solely depend on the equation but put them in the form which information are decoded. They do not write difficult equation that they can not solve, but put them into a simplified equation that know to solve the problem. On fraction problems, they draw a diagram to solve the problem without calculation, Fourth, the students who. successfully solved the problem drew clear diagram that can be understood with intuition. By representing visually, unnecessary information were omitted and used simple image were drawn using symbol or lines, and to clarify the relationship between the information, numeric explanation was added. In addition, they restricted use of complicated motion line and dividing line, proper noun in the word problems were not changed into abbreviation or symbols to clearly restate the problem. Adding additional information was useful source in solving the problem.