A Study of Proofs in An Undergraduate Calculus Course - Yoshioka (1993) PDF

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MATHEMATICAL OBJECTIVITY AS PRACTICE:
A STUDY OF PROOFS IN AN UNDERGRADUATE CALCULUS COURSE
ALAN YORKE YOSHIOKA
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies

and the Faculty of Environmental Studies
in partial fulfilment o f the requirements
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Master in Environmental Studies
York University
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September 1993

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MATHEMATICAL OBJECTIVITY AS PRACTICE:
by ALAN YORKE YOSHIOKA
a t h e s is su b m itte d to th e F acu lty of G rad u ate S tu d ie s of York

U n iv e rsity in p a rtia l fu lfillm e n t of th e re q u irem en ts of th e
d e g re e of
MASTER IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
© 1993
P e rm is sio n h a s b e e n g ra n te d to THE LIBRARY OF YORK
UNIVERSITY to len d or s e ll c o p ie s of th is th e s is , an d to th e
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA to m icrofilm th is th e s is a n d
to lend or s e l l c o p ie s of th e film ,
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w is e rep ro d u c ed w ith o u t th e a u th o r 's w ritte n p e rm issio n .

UNIVERSITE
SYORK UNIVERSITY
F A C U L T Y OF G R A D U A T E S T U D I E S
I recommend that the thesis prepared
under my supervision by
ALAN YORKE YOSHIOKA
entitled
MATHEMATICAL O B J E C T IV IT Y AS P R A C T IC E :
be accepted In partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
MASTER IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
S ept ember 1993 PeJ- (hiPAj Supervisor

P, R o g e rs
Recommendation concurred in by the following
Examining Committee
G. C a r r o t h e r s P. Rogers
A. Murray
L. S a l t e r
S e p t em b er 1993
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n p rohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This project has benefited from the support o f more people than I can name
here.
My interest in the nature of mathematics has been nurtured over the years by
many friends including Allan Stokes, Forrest Ann Lenney, Greg Anglin, Lisa
Lajeunesse and Kathleen Lawry. 1 was challenged and excited by the teaching of
professors at the University of Waterloo, including Bruno Forte, Keith Rowe and Alan
Adamson.
My supervisor, Pat Rogers, has enhanced this thesis — both as product and
process — through her insight, honesty, patience and warmth. I have greatly
appreciated Leesa Fawcett’s enthusiasm, good humor and clear-headed criticism. Alex
Murray helped me clarify the goals and structure of the thesis. Gerry Carrothers’
administrative help was invaluable. The Faculty o f Environmental Studies has been a
congenial home for interdisciplinary work.
This thesis would have been impossible without the cooperation of ‘Joan
Lewis’, ‘Don’ and the students of Math 120, especially ‘Kevin’.
Dorothy Smith, George Smith, and Stephen Lerman gave me helpful early
advice and encouragement. 1 was fortunate to be able to share work in progress with
friends and colleagues at FES, on the Internet, and at the Canadian Mathematics
Education Study Group/Groupe canadien d’dtude en didactique des mathdmatiqucs. In
iii
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of th e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

particular, Dorothy Buerk, Jen Good, Ken Kelly, Kate Krug, Lesley Lee, Mark Lutes,
Hugh McCague, Sherry Rowley, Dorothy W insor and especially Michael Bresalier and
Kyle Pearce, gave me invaluable feedback and emotional support. I am especially
grateful to those friends who thought they knew nothing about math but listened to me
anyway. I am also indebted to Tom Ciancone, Kim-Man Chan, Doug Robinson, Mark
Meisner, Peter Penz, Gillian Kranias and Chris Cavanaugh.
Figure 1 is reproduced by permission of John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
My brothers, Ted and Andrew, and my mother provided help when I most
needed it. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the invaluable personal and intellectual
support of two dear friends, Alan O’Connor and Peter Bartlett.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

FOREWORD
This thesis is a more than an academic project for me. Its roots date back to a
first-year calculus course 1 took more than a decade ago at the University of Waterloo.
There, mathematics was a topic o f endless conversation for a tightly knit group of
budding "pure mathies.1' We joked amongst ourselves about the transformation we
were undergoing. Paraphrasing the crusty law professor played by John Houseman in
The Paper Chase, we intoned, "You come here, your mind a bowl full of mush, and
you leave, thinking like a Mathematician."
Those were exhilarating times. It felt as though everything was called into
question, nothing could be taken for granted. When one of us described a proof as
beautiful, another retorted gleefully, "Yes, but can you prove it’s beautiful?"
That period also marked a parallel development, my political awakening. For
the first time, I could imagine radically alternative structures in the social realm as
well as the mathematical. My world was doubly inverted. And yet what did
mathematics have to do with the political issues in my life? I wondered whether the
parallels would ever meet.
Fast forward to the Faculty o f Environmental Studies. My stated goal when 1
applied for admission was, "to gain a deeper understanding of the social, political and
economic forces at the root of environmental destruction." Yet over time, my search
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n pro hibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

for a coherent structural framework within what I would now identity as conflict
theory, has given way to a problematization of the factual basis of any theory. 1
turned again to mathematics, this time focusing on the nature o f mathematical
knowledge. What are the implications of the claim that all knowledge, mathematics
included, is socially constructed?
This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the
degree of Master in Environmental Studies.
The thesis represents a synthesis of the three components of my Plan of
Study, entitled, "Social Studies of Mathematics." The first component, skills in the
"Social Organization of Knowledge” (Smith 1990a), including pedagogy, linguistic or
textual analysis, feminist research methods and epistemology, links the latter, more
substantive components, "Mathematics as Social Practice," and "Politics of
Difference."
1 am planning to pursue further studies o f mathematics-as-practice at the
University of London’s programme in History o f Science, Technology and Medicine.
My proposed research topic is "Institutionalization of Inferential Statistics in Medical
Research in Mid-20th Century England: The Case o f Randomized Clinical Trials."
That project will continue my investigation of the relation between power and the
production of objective knowledge through mathematical practice.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... ii
FOREWORD .................................................................................................................... iv
LIST OF F IG U R E S ............................................................................................................ xi
ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... xii
1. IN T R O D U C T IO N ........................................................................................................... 1
1.1 A sociology of 2 + 2 ................................................................................... 1
1.2 The politics of knowledge ........................................................................ 6
1.3 The picture model .................................................................................... 10
1.4 Choice of s i t e ............................................................................................ 12
1.5 A note on ‘math anxiety’ ..................................................................... 14
1.6 From practice to power ........................................................................ 15
PART ONE. POSITIONING
2. PER SPEC TIV ES........................................................................................................... 20
2.1 Wittgensteinian p h ilo so p h y ..................................................................... 21
2.2 Ethnom ethodology.................................................................................... 23
2.3 Social organization o f k n o w le d g e .......................................................... 31
2.4 P oststructuralism ....................................................................................... 37
2.5 C onclusion.................................................................................................. 44
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3. A CONSTRUCTIVIST CLA SSRO O M .................................................................. 47
3.1 M e th o d s ..................................................................................................... 48
3.2 Description of the c l a s s ........................................................................... 52
PART TWO. READING
4. A TEXTBOOK P R O O F ............................................................................................. 75
4.1 Discursive power o f the te x tb o o k .......................................................... 78
4.2 Introducing proofs about limits ............................................................. 83
4.3 The craft o f the g r a p h .............................................................................. 87
4.4 Multiple read in g s....................................................................................... 91
4.5 The polished p r o o f .................................................................................... 99
4.6 C onclusion................................................................................................ 100
5. BOARD-WORK: PROOF IN CONSTRUCTION ............................................ 102
5.1 Set-up of the lesson .............................................................................. 105
5.2 Comparison with the textbook p r o o f ................................................. 106
5.3 Constructing and interpreting the figure ............................................ 115
5.4 C onclusion................................................................................................ 120
viii
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of th e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n p rohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

6 . ASSIGNMENT S O L U T IO N S .............................................................................. 122
6.1 Assignments and data g a th e rin g .......................................................... 124
6.2 An interpretable t e x t .............................................................................. 127
6.3 A clash o f language-gam es.................................................................. 132
6.4 The need for d ia lo g u e ........................................................................... 137
6.5 Conclusion............................................................................................... 142
7. ERROR ANALYSIS A SSIG NM EN T.................................................................. 143
7.1 Description of the assignment ............................................................. 147
7.2 Internalized objectivity ........................................................................ 151
7.3 Sublimed and situated writing ............................................................. 156
7.4 Error explanation as confession .......................................................... 163
7.5 Conclusion............................................................................................... 172
PART THREE. CONNECTING.
8. CO N CLU SIO N ........................................................................................................ 175
8.1 Sum m ary.................................................................................................. 176
8.2 Language-games .................................................................................... 180
8.3 Objectivity as practice ........................................................................ 184
8.4 Resistance to p o w e r .............................................................................. 187
8.5 In closing ............................................................................................... 191
ix

APPENDICES
1 Handout on axioms for the real number s y s te m .................................. 195
2 Research B rie f............................................................................................ 201
3 Consent f o r m s ............................................................................................ 202
4 Transcription conventions........................................................................ 204
R EFER EN C ES............................................................................................................. 205

LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. A Textbook P r o o f ........................................................................................ 85
Figure 2. A Proof in Construction ......................................................................... 107
Figure 3. Brian’s Assignment Solution.................................................................... 126
Figure 4. Mona’s Assignment Solution ................................................................. 131
Figure 5. Error Analysis Assignment .................................................................... 146
Figure 6. Julia’s test solution and error explanation .......................................... 152
Figure 7. Carol’s test solution and error analysis ................................................ 158
Figure 8. Simon’s test solution and error explanation............................................ 169
xi
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
ABSTRACT
This thesis investigates the objectivity of mathematical facts. Informed by
Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of language and mathematics, ethnomethodology,
poststructuralism and Dorothy Smith’s method in the social organization of
knowledge, I perform a textual analysis of proofs taken from the textbook, board-
work and assignment solutions in a first-year honours calculus course, taught using a
social constructivist approach, at a Canadian university. I present a way of seeing
mathematical objects as products of human practice rather than as representations of
Platonic forms; thus, mathematical objectivity is constitutively produced in and
through the "lived-work of proving." I treat technical, mathematical writing as a
communicative act intended to accomplish its author’s goals; therefore, I recommend,
marking/grading should be a dialogue based on interpretive understanding. I argue that
if one wishes to dismantle authoritarian relations in mathematics education, one must
consider both mathematics and power as processes.
xn

in memory o f dian marino
artist, teacher, friend

I would do my utmost to show the effects o f the charm,
and o f the associations o f ‘Mathematics’.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
There is no religious denomination in which the misuse o f metaphysical

expressions has been responsible for so much sin as it has in mathematics.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value
Mathematics is a human activity.

Hans Freudenthal, Mathematics as an Educational Task
1.1 A sociology o f 2 + 2
I once asked, "What is 2 + 2? How do you know?" on a survey at a reunion
of mathematics professors and graduates. Unanimously, my respondents wrote that the
first answer was 4 — sometimes after a bit of banter about modular arithmetic'. But
the second question prompted some jocular head-scratching, beard-stroking and
reaching for refills of wine glasses. One professor replied simply, "Good question."
Some referred to authority. They said, "That’s what we were told," by
mothers or grade one teachers, for example. Some referred to formal definitions of
arithmetic, "4, by definition o f integers and definition of addition," or
"2 + 2 * 2 + (1 + 1) (2 + 1) + 1 " 4." Some referred to experience, "1
can use my fingers to count if 1 have to!" One also referred to convention, "4 because
1 Modular arithmetic is explained on page 5, note 3.

that is what we call < G ) + < 5 > . Purely from experience I guess."
Many people, if they stop to consider the question o f mathematical certainty
at all, have the feeling that there is something special about mathematical knowledge.
Though they may find all sorts of other facts and beliefs open to doubt, they feel that
2 + 2 somehow must be 4. Many people also have the feeling that mathematics is
strange, intimidating or alienating. As 1 will mention below, it is not unusual for
people in our society to fear or hate mathematics, to the point that 'math avoidance’ is
a significant factor — though by no means the sole one — in reproducing a gendered,
racialized and class-based division o f labour (Willis 1992; Walkerdine 1989). It is a
puzzle how something as abstract as mathematics could have such worldly
consequences as social stratification. Some have argued that abstraction itself is a
politically loaded process. 1 suspect, though 1 will not argue the case here, that
associations between abstraction and political domination are historically contingent,
and a more holistic mathematics is not intrinsically ethically or politically superior
(Eglash 1992). 1 do argue that some people’s alienation from mathematics is related to
their attribution of the certainty of mathematics to a heavenly realm, as one of
Dorothy Buerk's students expressed so eloquently:
On the eighth day, God created mathematics. He took stainless steel, and
he rolled it out thin, and he made it into a fence, forty cubits high, and infinite
cubits long. And on this fence, in fair capitals he did print rules, theorems,
axioms and pointed reminders. 'Invert and multiply' ‘The square on the
hypotenuse is three decibels louder than one hand clapping.' 'Always do what’s
in parentheses first.* And when he was finished, he said, ‘On one side of this
fence will reside those who are good at math. And on the other will remain

those who are bad at math, and w oe unto them, for they shall weep and
gnash their teeth.’
M ath does make me think o f a stainless steel wall — hard, cold,
smooth, offering no handhold, all it does is glint back at me. Edge up to it,
put your nose against it, it doesn’t take your shape, it doesn’t have any smell,
all it does is m ake your nose cold. I like the shine of it — it does look smart,
in an icy way. B u t I resent its cold impenetrability, its supercilious glare
(Buerk 1985, 59).
The dom inant view o f mathematical objectivity is that though pedagogy and
applications m ight be biased, the pure core o f mathematics is asocial and neutral, and
any attem pt to inject political ideas into m athem atics is at best misguided. On the
other hand, the Strong Program (Bloor 1976, 1983) in the Sociology o f Scientific
K now ledge asserts that all knowledge, even mathematical knowledge, is socially
constructed and can be explained by social science. In this conventionalist account, the
basis o f the objectivity o f mathematics is social agreement grounded in language, and
hence, as a socially-constructed body o f know ledge, mathematics is subject to the
sam e social critique as any other know ledge. "If it is acknowledged that mathem atics
is a fallible social c o n s tru c t,. . . m athem atics becomes responsible for its uses and
consequences, in education and society" (Ernest 1991, xii). And perhaps more
im portantly for the Strong Program, such an acknowledgement w ould elim inate the
status of m athem atics as the example lim iting the scope of the sociology of
know ledge, enabling a more thorough questioning of all received truths, by
recognizing that n<) know ledge was neutral.
Thus, in this thesis, I investigate the nature of mathematical objectivity. I
4
chose to study mathematics in a classroom rather than in the offices of mathematical
researchers because I believed the classroom would be a key transitional site of
reproduction and diffusion o f the status of mathematical truth. Inspired by the Strong
°rogram (Bloor 1976; Restivo 1983), I deliberately chose to conduct my research in an
abstract course, honours calculus, in order to create leverage for political work by
showing that political interests operated even in this apparently neutral setting.
That project has undergone some serious rethinking. I have not abandoned the
hope, expressed in my thesis proposal, that I could "contribute to a radical program in
the social study of science, by showing even the core activities of mathematics
(popularly believed to be determined by structures existing independently o f human
consciousness) to be socially constructed"; however, my statement should now be
interpreted rather differently than originally intended. My revised project fits the
problematic set out by Sharrock and Anderson in their account of the positivist
resistance2 to the strong social constructivist position.
Sociology of knowledge has the inclination to treat the idea of a sociological

explanation as being paradigmatically identified with, if not exhausted by,
interest explanations. It is hard enough for some to grasp that science and
maths are human creations, and to ask them to accept that they are created
out of the basest power struggles over material interest is just too much. If
we are right, then the problem which actually shapes the new conception of
the sociology of knowledge is not that of formulating an explanation o f our
knowledge but, rather, that of countering subliming conceptions of it
(Sharrock and Anderson 1984, 385, emphasis added).
2 This resistance originates in a position diametrically opposed to their own

critique, incidentally.

In other words, I am no longer attempting to show the intrusion of extra-mathematical
social structures and forces into the ostensibly purely-tcchnical domain of
mathematics; rather, my focus here has been to see how that technical, spccifically-
mathematical practice is itself constitutivelv social.
As I hope to make clear, I accept that 2+2=4 is an objective fact1; my
challenge is not to 2+2 actually being 4, but to the usual way of envisioning that
objectivity. I propose that any satisfactory answer to the question of mathematical
objectivity will be found through seeing afresh the lived detail of mathematical
practice. In other words, I locate the objectivity of a mathematical statement, its ‘out-
thereness,’ in the ordinary yet marvellous, endlessly diverse, "local, occasioned,
situated, real-worldly, materially-specific" work of actually doing mathematics
(Livingston 1987, 122), and not in a transcendental reality which exists independently
of human consciousness and outside time and space.
This study’s core is not a philosophical critique of foundationalist beliefs,
however, but an empirical textual analysis of proofs — in all their concreteness and
3 O f course, here I am referring to ordinary integer arithmetic; the mathematicians

at the reunion joked about ‘modular arithmetic* as there is a system in which 2+2=1
(modulo 3). Modular arithmetic has a wrap-around feature, most commonly seen in
our time system, where a glance at a clock will confirm that 11+5=4 (modulo 12).

remarkable specificity. By studying real-worldly mathematical texts4,1 hope here to
illustrate a ‘way of seeing’ which restores the place of the human knower and doer of
mathematics. That perspective may open up free space for new approaches to teaching,
and more generally for new thinking about the nature of knowledge.
1.2 The politics of knowledge
My context and motivation for this enquiry is the contestation o f the Western
scientific paradigm and the proposal of new models of enquiry and knowledge (e.g.,
Harding 1985; Smith 1990a; Stanley 1990), sketched very briefly below.
On the one hand, scientific practice and the ideology of science are assuming
an ever greater role in global affairs. Power is shifting from relatively democratic
institutions to transnational bodies, for example, the United Nations' Food and
Agriculture Organization, which manage the global commons according to ostensibly
scientific principles.
On the other hand, the authority of Western scientific method is under attack
from important sectors of society and academia, particularly those associated with
"new democratic struggles" (Mouffe 1988), such as radical ecology and feminism.
Preferring interpretive understanding as a model for knowledge, sometimes taking
quantum uncertainty as a normative metaphor for science, critics argue that value-free
4 Throughout the thesis, to avoid confusion, I use "texts" only in the broad sense
of reproducible materials, typically ones in written form, and "textbooks" for books
used as educational resources.

scientific objectivity is a myth — and at that a very useful myth for those who
dominate the earth.
In this context, where the question of scientific objectivity is fraught with
political significance, the question of mathematical objectivity occupies a peculiarly
pivotal location. Is there any form of knowledge which is neutral? How could human
values influence the ‘abstract’ realm o f mathematics? Might the very fact of
abstraction itself subtly lead to reductionism and domination? In an essay entitled,
"Loss of Meaning through Intellectual Processes: Mathematical Abstraction," Davis
and Hersh warned,
Abstraction is the source of the greatest benefit and also the source of possible
damage. The damage derives from the self-deception that one has, indeed,
discovered the essence of the larger whole. Abstraction is extraction, reduction,
simplification, elimination. Such operations must entail some degree of
falsification. . . .
Whenever anyone writes down an equation that explicitly or implicitly
alludes to an individual or a group of individuals, whether this be in economics,
sociology, psychology, medicine, politics, demography or military affairs, the
possibility of dehumanization exits [sic]. . . [T]his dehumanization is intrinsic to
the fundamental intellectual processes that are inherent in mathematics (Davis
and Hersh 1986, pp. 281, 283).
Here 1 wish to clarify my own approach to the relation between abstraction
and objectivity. As I unpack the notion of ‘abstraction’, 1 find two rather different
forms of abstracting: the first, for example, is to move from counting these apples:
one apple, two apples, three apples to counting: one-two-three; the second, to move
from counting, an activity or process, to number, a structure or essence.
One explanation of the fact that everyone can agree that 2 + 2 = 4 is simply

that all the contentious matter has been stripped out. In this view, subjective
disagreement is attributed to political interests, and hence upon the removal o f the
traces of nature and society, nothing is left to cause dispute; thus, we can all agree
how to add because adding is the same whether we are adding Tomahawk missiles or
tofu-burgers.
My concern, however, is with the second type o f abstracting: an erasing of
the practice which is mathematics, an inverting which makes structures primary and
the work o f mathematicians epiphenomenal. The result o f this altered and alienated
character o f mathematical facts is mystification. As Dorothy Smith argued,
paraphrasing Marx’s (1978, 320) critique of the mystification which made
commodities appear separated from the workers’ labour power that produced them,
A fact is. . . a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of

men’s consciousness appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the
product of that consciousness (Smith 1990a, 68).
Smith therefore critiqued as idealist any methods o f inquiry which start from concepts
and principles rather than from the actual practical experience9 o f people.
The original relation between the fact and the reflection, wherein the principle
arises as an abstraction from the fact, is then reversed. The fact becomes an
expression of the principle. (Smith 1990a, 44)
The image of mathematical facts as Platonic structures is a prime example o f such
5 Note that experience need not be ‘natural’ and unmediated; in my usage it includes
experience of counting, graphing, taking limits, differentiating and performing other
mathematical operations.

9
reversals, and my main task will be to clarify an alternative account of mathematical
objectivity.
Thus with my focus on the process of doing abstract work, 1 will not address
here such challenges as incorporating critical word problems into abstract
mathematical courses (say on algebraic topology) in order to make them more relevant
and politically useful. Rather, I will argue that the origins of the products of
consciousness must never be forgotten; concepts must not be granted an existence
prior to the consciousness which constructed them. I will be presenting a way of
seeing mathematics as practice.
My philosophical orientation in this thesis is nicely captured by the following
lengthy quotation on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s work, though I will also address questions
of power which extend beyond his concerns.
There is a strong tendency in human thinking to sublime our practices, to

conceive them in such an aesthetically purified and idealised a fashion that they
begin to seem almost supernatural. We make them mysterious to ourselves: how
could such wonderful things come into being? One answer is, we have made
them ourselves but this answer is hard for those who have sublimed a practice to
accept. How could such fallible, profane creatures as ourselves produce such
unfailing perfection. If maths and science were just the product of our practical
collective lives how could they work, how could they apply in such a
penetrating and general way to nature if they were only contingent creations of
particular civilisations?
Wittgenstein’s method is designed to correct the tendency to sublime, to
draw people’s attention to the fact that this is what they are doinr nd, thereby,
to discourage them from continuing in that way. In his later phi! ,ophy, and
particularly in his work on mathematics, he is trying to make the suggestion that
we have created mathematics, that it is a contingent phenomenon, persuasive to
those who want to sublime it, to show that (i) maths is not sublime in the way
they think it is and (ii) that recognising that maths is our creation does not mean

Ij;
10
that it does not work. Mathematics is not affected by our decision in this
respect, it loses none of its use or practical power if people stop thinking of it in
a rather superstitious way (Sharrock and Anderson 1984, 381-2, emphases
added).
Lllhg-plcuirfe-rottdfii
In this thesis, I aim to challenge the pervasive way o f seeing mathematical
statements as straightforward pictures of mathematical reality. I assert that it is
misleading to think that because the symbols of mathematical communication are
precisely defined, the meaning of mathematical texts can accordingly be deduced in a
straightforward way. To explain that people communicate mathematically because they
"have something to say" invites the notion that this ‘something’ is a mathematical
object to be transferred to a reader’s mind. Instead, I want to call attention to the way
mathematical communications are produced in order to accomplish certain goals. That
is, the meaning of mathematical texts is fundamentally a performance.
It is difficult and frustrating to try to hold one’s gaze on these "performative"
(Austin 1962) aspects of mathematical communication, and to see mathematics as
practice. At every turn of my analysi 'f mathematical proofs, 1 found myself falling
into thinking about mathematics in a wholly abstract fashion, and taking for granted
the everyday competencies that are part of the doing of mathematics. Trying to
counteract this subliming tendency, 1 insist throughout the thesis on the importance of
the specificity and concreteness of the proofs 1 am examining. The reader should not
be surprised if it takes them a while to pick up this alternative way of seeing; there is,

11
as Eric Livingston said, a gestalt shift involved in seeing mathematics as practice.
1 am attempting to understand mathematical proving as patterned social
action. In order to accomplish this I must disrupt the ‘natural’ reading of a proof as a
picture of an abstract and static mathematical structure (see Laborde 1991). Instead I
emphasize the craft of its construction, like that of a poem. (And throughout the
thesis, I will reflexively call attention to the crafting of my own analysis.)
More apt than poetry, however, might be the metaphor of mathematics as
photography. In both mathematics and photography, the naive model is that the text or
image is a straightforwardly isomorphic representation o f an external reality. But as
any skilled photographer can say, the ‘point and shoot’ model fails to describe
adequately how an image comes to be on film or on paper. A photo is composed with
a communicative intent, with attention to lighting and depth of field, etc., and the
negative is developed and printed; all of these processes contribute to the construction
of an image — and then as the image is read and talked about, it enters another field
o f discourse. O f course, the fact that the process is constructed does not imply that
one can produce any image one wants just by clicking the shutter.
To push my metaphor to the limit, if the naive model is true and proofs arc
simply photos of mathematical reality, why shouldn’t anyone be able to ‘take out an
Instamatic’ and produce an effective proof? Why would one need to understand
mathematics first, before being able to take a picture of it?
I hope it is clear that I am not saying that mathematics is inaccurate or false,

12
nor that the ‘photographs’ have been doctored to distort reality. I do hope and expect
that the ‘way of seeing’ mathematical objectivity which 1 lead the reader through here,
locating the ‘out-thereness’ of mathematics in texts and in actual practice, will suggest
improved ways of teaching mathematics.
My analysis in some places may strike the reader as mundane. In a sense, it
is meant to be. I intend to draw attention to the very ordinary work which teachers
and students do in order to accomplish their goals.
1.4 Choice of site
I will now describe why I chose the particular site where my textual data
originated.
1 chose to study writings from a first-year mathematics class because I was
interested in the students’ process of learning the procedures of doing university
mathematics, and in the transition from a high-school model of mathematics. This is
often a transition from a ‘cookbook-style’ of applying algorithms to a model where the
fundamental activity is to write proofs. Ideally it is a transition from separated
procedural knowing to connected knowing, in the terms of Belenky et al (1986); that
is, students must learn to use both intuition and logical deduction in harmony. I
thought the rules of university-level mathematical practice would be more readily
observable when they were being explicitly discussed — and when inexperienced
practitioners were noticeably breaking those rules. This course also offered access to

13
mathematical practice with content that was ‘non-trivial’ while relatively accessible.
I studied a class taught using an alternative approach called constructivism, in
which, as I explain in chapter 3, mathematical knowledge is considered to be a fallible
human product. I chose this because I expected the process of generating knowledge to
be more visible in such a class, where students had opportunities in class to work
through mathematical ideas for themselves, than in a traditional lecture where proofs
were presented in a finished form.
As well, I wanted an alternative classroom because ,1 did not want simply to
critique the traditional organization of mathematics education, but to understand a
positive alternative. I was interested in documenting a form of teaching and learning
which I believed and still believe to be more meaningful, humane and effective for
many students than is a form based on traditional lectures, competitive individualism
and an absolutist model of mathematical truth. Such an alternative approach to
teaching is still uncommon at the university level; however, I did find, as 1 suspected,
that the emergent form retained some aspects of the old form (see chapter 6 for my
argument on the pedagogical influence of a traditional model of mathematical
objectivity). Thus, though my project was not one of a generalizing social science, 1
believe my analysis is applicable to other educational situations, as it points, for
example, to the need for dialogical interaction even in technical fields.
A word about my own relationship to the course material may be in order. As
I said when I introduced myself to the class, 1 had some years back been a student

14
in a course which had had similar content but a more traditional and highly
competitive teaching method. From this and my experience as a former teaching
assistant in numerous courses in calculus or related topics, I have access to multiple
ways o f reading calculus proofs or other texts in the course — the ways o f a
mathematician or mathematics teacher as well as those of a sociologist.
1.5 A note on ’math anxiety’
It is unfortunate that the term lmath anxiety’ has gained such widespread
currency, as 1 believe it individualizes a social problem and may pathologize the
victims (Buerk 1985). ’Math avoidance’ is somewhat better, as it can recognize the
agency o f people who may opt out of a way of knowing that they find alienating;
however, what that term ignores is that people have been denied access to
mathematical knowledge, often through racial and gender discrimination. In any event,
there will be some readers o f this thesis who have doubts and fears about their
competence to make sense o f this research. 1 can assure them that others with
similarly disabling backgrounds in mathematics have been able to understand this work
and have even experienced a sense of liberation in its conception of mathematics-as-
practice.
That said, 1 believe that to pursue my investigation of the interpretation of
proofs, I must not simply seize upon isolated stylistic elements of the mathematical
texts, but actually engage with the Hved-work o f proving, as a patterned social

phenomenon. Thus, my description will necessarily look quite ‘mathematical’.
Eric Livingston faced a similar situation in presenting a highly technical
analysis of an advanced theorem in mathematical logic.
First, given the claims of the book, it was impossible for me to turn
away from the examination of the material detail of mathematical praxis. I
have tried to write the book so that its arguments are intelligible over and
above the mathematical analysis. The mathematically uninitiated might do
well to treat the symbols as untranslated hieroglyphics. The hieroglyphics
should, however, be inspected and, perhaps, by the end of the book they will
begin to take on a fuller life.
A more serious drawback for the mathematically unsophisticated is that

I do not think that the descriptiveness and generalizability of the book’s
findings and the faithfulness (or lack thereof) of my analyses to actual
mathematical praxis can be decided without reference to and knowledge of
the details of that praxis (Livingston 1986, 19-20).
Livingston’s second point applies less to my own work than to his, I believe, because
my topic is the praxis of mathematical pedagogy rather than of mathematical research
more generally, and because my treatment of the topic extends outside his theoretical
tradition, which focuses quite deliberately on the intelligibility of technical action.
I do not presume that the reader has any background in calculus; however, 1
will expect some ability to follow simple algebra and mathematical functions, and to
read graphs. The need for these taken-for-granted communicative competencies will
itself be discussed in the context of the formation of a community of knowers.
1.6 From practice to power
Part One of this thesis, Positioning, locates me in relation to the texts 1

16
analyze and to key theoretical perspectives on language and mathematics. Chapter 2 is
a discussion of social theory, focusing on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Harold
Garfinkel, Dorothy Smith and Michel Foucault. In Chapter 3 , 1 describe some aspects
of the professor’s approach to teaching and learning in Math 120, relating it to the
theory and practice of mathematics education, including social constructivism. My
primary intention in the chapter is to provide a concrete setting for the mathematical
writings I will analyze in Part Two. I also discuss how I made these writings available
for analysis.
The core of the thesis, Part Two, Readings, is a sequence of four chapters,
each a textual analysis of mathematical writings as they appear in four specific
contexts: a proof from the course textbook, a proof developed on the blackboard,
marked solutions to an assignment, and students’ analyses of their errors on their first
test in the course. I use these texts as a means of access to the real-worldly practices
of mathematics education. Because this is an exploratory study, I have not discussed in
detail some of the methodological issues arising within the now well-established
approach to social research drawn upon here.
My focus in Chapters 4 and 5 is the production of mathematical objectivity in
a textbook proof and a proof produced collaboratively by the members of the class,
respectively. Though the propositions proven in these examples are very closely
related, I show important differences in the organization of the texts. These differences
call into question the concept of an underlying structure of which both might be

17
thought to be concretizations. I show these texts to be the results of processes of
working-up.
In Chapters 6 and 7 , 1 analyze written interactions between students and two
people in positions of authority, the professor and teaching assistant. One assignment
was to prove several propositions, including the same proposition as in Chapter 5. I
am once again interested in how objective entities are crafted; however, I also relate
that objectivity to the discourses of mathematical ability and to the students’
conceptions of themselves.
In Chapter 6 , 1 show that the teaching assistant read the student’s proof as an
object, compared it to an ideal object, i.e., a flawless proof, and made corrections in
order to transform the former to the latter. I advocate an alternative, to read the
student’s proof as a performance, to take it on its own terms as adequate to the
communicative purpose at hand, and hence to respond in a dialogue to whatever
strengths and weaknesses may be apparent ir. the exhibited mathematical object.
Such a dialogue was built into the "error analysis" assignment I analyze in
Chapter 7. This assignment was an alternative teaching technique in which students
actively reflected upon the process they used in answering questions on a test. I
suggest that by directing students to write about situated mathematical practices, this
assignment reorganized the power relations of the classroom. In particular, the
students’ production of themselves as mathematicians showed the intimate link
between power and knowledge.

18
In Part Three, I conclude with remarks on the implications for teaching and
further research of this way of seeing mathematical objectivity as practice.
This introduction has presented my central concern with the ‘out-thereness’ of
mathematics. I hope that breaking free from the hold of a transcendental mathematical
reality will create space for mathematical teaching that is more effective, humane and
democratic.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n proh ibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

PART ONE
POSITIONING

CHAPTER 2
PERSPECTIVES
Arithmetic as the natural history (mineralogy) of numbers. But who talks like
this about it? Our whole thinking is penetrated with this idea... I should like
to be able to describe how it comes about that mathematics appears to us
now as the natural history of the domain of numbers, now again as a
collection of rules.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics
In this chapter I set out the main theoretical perspectives which have shaped
this thesis, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of language and mathematics,
Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology, Dorothy Smith’s social organization o f knowledge and
Foucault’s poststructuralism. All were concerned with the use of language in the
production of shared meaning, which is a unifying theme for my work. I recognize
that there are important differences among the theorists whose work I discuss; my
purpose, however, has been to draw upon rich, complex and diverse literature for some
concepts to guide my exploration.
Wittgenstein provided a critique of the Platonist explanation of the necessity
of mathematical truth. His concept of "language games" clarified the multiplicity of
purposes which language serves, and can be a practice-based model of the meaning of
mathematics as well as natural language. Ethnomethodology showed a way to carry
forward Wittgenstein’s project of clarifying the actions that people take for granted.
20

21
Smith used insights from ethnomethodology and Marxian materialism to analyze how
knowledge, in the form of texts, organizes and is organized by social relations. Finally
Foucault disrupted a commonsense notion of power coming from above, and
substituted a relational "field" of power operating through discourses beyond
individual rationality.
2.1 Witteensteinian philosophy
Wittgenstein’s later work is useful to me in two main ways. First, with his
concept of language games, he argued that language is used for many purposes other
than representation, and hence that the meaning of an expression can be found only by
examining the expression’s use. Second, he rejected Platonism on the grounds that
imagining abstract entities gains us nothing and only confuses us.
In his early work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Wittgenstein set out a
picture theory of meaning. As Anderson, Hughes and Sharrock noted, the early
Wittgenstein holds that there is a correspondence of structures, that the

structure of language and the structure of reality match each other. In an
important sense, language and reality share the same structure, a logical
structure which is also common to thought — giving the linkage of our four
terms. Language and reality are structurally isomorphic. The structure of
language corresponds to the structure of facts in the world in the way that the
structure of a picture corresponds to the structure of that which it portrays —
hence, a picture theory of meaning. . .
The picture portrays its subjects because it embodies an organized
system of representation and thus, in the same way, the grooves on a ‘record’
album ‘picture’ the music that the album contains (Anderson, Hughes and
Sharrock 1988, 188).
In his later work, however, he renounced the picture model.

22
Through comprehensive reconsideration of his earlier position Wittgenstein

came to the view that philosophy sh o u ld .. . refrain from attempting to put
forward theories and should, instead, attempt to remove philosophical
puzzlement by showing that the problem was not a genuine one, only a
product of confusion (Anderson, Hughes and Sharrock 1988, 190-1).
Throughout Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, the concept of
language games was a direct attack on his earlier model. Words, he argued, are more
signals than labels; language is used for a variety of purposes: telling jokes,
constructing an object from a description, giving orders and obeying them, making up
a story and reading it, scolding, and so forth. Language games include referring,
describing and asserting but these are not privileged over the others. Proving and
defining are distinct language games, so for example, in the class I attended, students
might know how to prove without necessarily being able to define proof.
Mathematical Platonism asserts that mathematical objects belong to a
transcendental realm of ideal forms, and there can then be nothing social about them.
In an eloquent little book called A M athematician’s Apology, the great English
mathematician, G. H. Hardy exemplified this view:
I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to
discover or observe it, and that the theorems which we prove, and which we
describe grandiloquently as our ‘creations’, are simply our notes of our
observations (Hardy 1967, 123-124).
The problem which arises for Platonism as an explanation of mathematical
knowledge, however, is how we gain access to this transcendental realm. Wittgenstein
neatly debunked the idea that correspondence with abstract objects in this

23
transcendental domain could justify our certainty about the results of our mathematical
calculations, because as an explanation of the necessity of mathematical truth
Platonism ends up begging the question.
For example, suppose someone argues that we know 25x25 = 625 because of
the correspondence between the structure o f 25-ness and the structure of 625-ncss in a
Platonic universe. This would then account not only for our answer but for our feeling
that even before we have performed the calculation, the answer is already 625, our
feeling that we are drawing along lines already faintly traced (Bloor 1983). The
problem for Platonism is our access to this ethereal world. How do we know we have
latched onto the right abstract object? If the answer is already 625, then "it’s also 624,
or 623, or any damn thing" (Wittgenstein 1976, 145). How we know which abstract
reality to choose is unexplained, rather like the choice between the United Church
God who accepts abortion and the Roman Catholic God who abhors it. David Bloor
put the trouble very aptly: "The Platonist’s problem is like that of the schoolboy who
cheats. He has to know who has the right answers to copy from" (Bloor 1983, 86).
2.2 Ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology informs this thesis in two primary ways. From the broad
corpus of studies and reflections (Garftnkel 1967; Garfinkel, Lynch and Livingston
1981; Bogen and Lynch 1989; Heritage 1984; Lynch 1992a, 1992b; Sharrock and
Anderson 1986), I take my general orientation toward the mundane detail of practical

» M .
24
activity, and from Livingston’s ethnomethodological studies of mathematics
(Livingston 1983, 1986; also discussed at length in Livingston 1987 and Lynch
1992a), I take a specific concept, the pair-structure, to address the problem of
objectivity in mathematics.
Ethnomethodologists are wary o f definitions, as they share Wittgenstein’s idea
that the meaning of words is to be found in their use. They recognize that definitions
create a temptation to theorize, and that concepts can always be elaborated as the need
arises, so I will not attempt to define ethnomethodology; however, at least a
preliminary description will orient the reader to their project, I hope.
Ethnomethodology is the study of the common, everyday naturally-occurring,

mundane methods that are used by people to produce and manage the common,
everyday activities of the everyday social world— activities like shaking hands,
taking turns-at-talk in a conversation, reaching a verdict, standing in line. The
list could go on— proving a theorem in mathematics... (Livingston 1987, 10,
emphasis added).
It was Garfinkel’s concern with the practical study and use of methods by particular
groups in society which motivated the coining of the name ethnomethodology1. I
1 Ethnomethodological studies of mathematics should not be confused with ethno-

mathematics; their disciplinary roots are entirely unrelated, despite the similar
etymology of their names. The latter is a project of alternative history, anthropology
and pedagogy of mathematics, which aims to describe and often to validate non-
European mathematical knowledge and practice (e.g., D ’Ambrosio 1985; Frankenstein
1989; Zaslavsky 1973; Joseph 1990; Nelson, Joseph and Williams 1993; Shan and
Bailey 1991). Lately, some critics (e.g., Harding 1992) have pointed out the
Eurocentrism of treating only non-Westem mathematics as marked by ethnicity, and
have insisted that the mathematical practice o f Western academics should also be a
topic for ethnomathematical research; in this respect, ethnomethodology and
ethnomathematics may now have greater opportunities to interact.

share its commitment to describing ordinary actions as a way of getting at what makes
things as they really are. As Garfinkel noted,
Ethnomethodological studies analyze everyday activities as members’ methods

for making those same activities visibly-rational-and-reportable-for-all-practical-
purposes, i.e., ‘accountable,’ as organizations of commonplace everyday
activities. . . Their study is directed to the tasks of learning how members’
actual, ordinary activities consist of methods to make practical actions, practical
circumstances, common sense knowledge of social structures, and practical
sociological reasoning anaiyzeable: and of discovering the formal properties of
commonplace, practical common sense actions, ’from within’ actual settings, as
ongoing accomplishments of those settings (Garfinkel 1967, vii-viii, emphases
added).
Their focus is thus on mundane everyday activities rather than extraordinary events.
The problem of ‘social order’ is not explained by reference to ‘norms’ and ‘values’ —
as ethnomethodology pursues a phenomenological "bracketing" of all causal
explanations, in order not to presuppose what is being examined, the very possibility
of making sense of the world. Instead, social order is described, as an
"accomplishment", i.e., as something that "members" of the "local production cohort"
are constantly producing by their actions.
A few examples may clarify what ethnomethodology is about. A queue, say
for a movie theatre, is not just an "objective social fact" (Durkheim 1982), but a
visibly objective social fact (Sharrock and Anderson 1986, 48). That is, cthnomethod*
ology’s point is that a social fact exists only in. through, and as the work that the
"members" of a "setting" perform to maintain it. A queue identically is the work of
standing-not-too-far-behind-and-not-too-close-to the person ahead, facing toward the
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n pro hibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

26
head o f the queue (unless one is talking to some who is facing forward and is
therefore recognizably in line), moving forward even a tiny bit when the person ahead
moves forward, challenging someone who butts in, etc.2 Even if I were to attempt to
butt into that queue — an action which might at first be thought of as denying the
objective reality of the queue — I would in fact help produce the queue as a socially-
ordered phenomenon through my actions o f sidling up, avoiding eye contact with the
people now behind me lest they challenge me and so on; this is far different than
innocently stepping into a queue I did not realize was there (see also Livingston 1987,
4-6).
In another case, Livingston (1987) described an observation of an intersection
in Manhattan, where a sociologist set up a rooftop camera to try to understand how
the masses o f pedestrians on each side o f the street crossed to the other side without
colliding with each other. From the bird’s eye view, he could see patterns o f ‘fronts’
and triangular ‘wedges’ behind ‘point people’. But Livingston pointed out that those
structural geometric patterns were visible only because they were being actively
produced by the ‘ground-level’ activity of dozens of individual pedestrians, who
constituted those patterns in and through their actions, such as making eye contact
with someone approaching them and adjusting their bodily position and location in
reaction to other pedestrians nearby. The bird’s-eye sociologist’s ability to theorize
1 The "et cetera11 is significant in that though the rules are specifiable, they are
never exhaustively specifiable (Ritzer 1992, 256).

27
about the micro-social order, Livingston argued, depended on a host of mundane,
hitherto unremarked and unremarkable activities.
Captivated by the ethnomethodological way of seeing the world, I now listen
to and watch people getting on a bus, taking turns at conversation, walking through a
crowded corridor, telling a joke and laughing at it, carrying on a correspondence by
electronic mail, lecturing, looking at public art, explaining how to use word-
processing macros, doing door-to-door soliciting and being solicited, playing chess
and so on. And I think to myself in amazement, "How do they do that? What is it that
makes the activities what they are?" Livingston asked, for example,
What makes it long-haul trucking instead of the family relocation in a rental

truck? What makes lecturing in sociology different from lecturing in chemistry?
What makes the work of the professions distinctively and witnessably that work
(Livingston 1987, 94)?
What makes a mathematical proof a mathematical proof and not just a string
of symbols containing lots of jc’s and square root signs? What makes this thesis
recognizable, discussable, "accountable" (Garfinkel 1967), examinable and approvable
as a masters thesis and not a term paper, a doctoral dissertation or a very long letter to
a friend? Is it simply having an appropriate cover page and foreword, or is there
something else visible in the way it is written?
How is it that 1 can tell within a few seconds of tuning in to a radio station
that I am hearing a sports broadcast? A classical music program? The two genres were
combined to hilarious effect in the satirical album, The Wurst of PDQ Bach (Schickelc

1971), where two men did a play-by-play commentary on a performance of
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as if it were a ball game. The patter went something like
this: "And is it?— is it?— Yes, it’s a theme! Aaand the piccolo passes it to the oboe,
and the oboe— omigosh the oboe’s running away with it! He’s really making a break
for it! Look at him go!!" The album shows me that it is not simply the excited tone o f
voice, the rapid-fire patter, the pained reaction to gaffes in the play, etc., which make
a dialogue a sports commentary; it is also the technical content, the fact that the
speakers are talking about quarterbacks and not trombones.
It is this concern with specificity and "identifying detail" (Livingston 1987)
which 1 wish to emulate. For example, in 1954, the sociologist Edward Shils
complained to his colleague about a study of a transcript from a bugged jury room,
By using Bales Interaction Process Analysis I’m sure we’ll learn what about a
ju ry ’s deliberations makes them a small group. But we want to know what about
their deliberations makes them a jury (Garfinkel, Lynch and Livingston 1981,
133).
A further significance of ethnomethodology is its potential for addressing the
pedagogical challenge of making shop-work skills visible. Ethnomethodology can
provide a detailed "descriptive analysis" (Livingston 1986) of the taken-for-granted
work o f doing science or mathematics. Part of the competence of a researcher consists
in being able to perform certain operations automatically or unproblematically; that
automatic quality then makes explaining those operations to a novice nearly
impossible. A lengthy but insightful quotation from Livingston expressed the problem.

29
In discovering sciences like mathematics and physics, one fintractablej problem,

and a central one, would have to be the problem of teaching discovery work, the
sustaining and living heart of such disciplines. Practitioners know that if it can
be taught at all, discovery work is taught indirectly under the auspices of tutorial
apprenticeship. It concerns shop-work and shop-work skills. It is notoriously
hard to teach, and impossible to teach explicitly.
The practical character o f a discovery, and the ordinary, naturally
organized work o f it, are technically unavailable to practitioners in and as the
work o f accountably finding. . . the observable, repeatable, analyzable,
demonstrable discovery. This is not because {practitioners] do not 'know’ those
[shop-work] skills; the skills are ‘in’ their fingertips. They know them, use
them, rely on them; they are what they do... What a discovery literally and
identically consists o f as piM is is inaccessible to practitioners as just that.
Therein, the professions are unable to teach it (Livingston 1987, 117, second
emphasis added).
How does an experienced mathematician know to look at a problem in a particular
way? Sometimes there is a label for the trick, such as "conjugating the radical," which
1 discuss in chapter 5, but often it is subtle and inaccessible to verbal articulation by
the practitioner. Perhaps like the heuristics in Thinking Mathematically (Mason et al
1985) or Polya’s How to Solve It (1945), these skills will become more easily learned
once described explicitly.3
The other major ethnomethodological idea for my thesis is the concept of the
"pair structure" of a mathematical proof, which comes from Eric Livingston’s
dissertation, An EthnomethodolouicaLInvestigation o f the Foundations of Mathematics
(1983), a detailed study of the work of proving Godel’s First Incompleteness
Theorem. As summarized by Lynch, Livingston’s argument was that a proof consists
3 Mason however, engaged in "categorizing" and "theorizing" (Livingston 1987)

about problem-solving, rather than simply describing.

30
of two coordinated but distinct parts,
a ‘proof-account’ (the textual statement o f a p ro o fs ‘schedule’) and ‘the lived-

work o f proving’ (the course of activities through which a ‘prover’ works out
the proof on any particular occasion) (Lynch 1992, 244).
That is, the formal proof-account and the lived-work o f proving are two sides o f the
same coin. A formal written proof-account acts as a set of instructions which any
competent practitioner can read and thereby recover from it a schedule o f steps — or
moves, as I prefer to call them — which prove the proposition in question. It is by
following along with the lived-work that a prover recognizes the adequacy o f the
written proof. Once the proof-account has been constructed, it appears to have an
independent and permanent existence; however, it is also recognizably a condensation
and idealization of the lived-work. What makes the proof-object an adequate proof is
its ability to evoke the sequence o f acts in the lived-work, which is the work of proof-
verification or of proof-reconstruction, i.e., of seeing that the polished text proves
what it proves. Thus the "lived-work of proving" is not synonymous with the "proof
in construction" (see chapter 5), which is the process of proving something for one’s
first time.
The lived-work of a proof — the observed temporality o f drawn proof-figures or

the observed temporality of found features in a proof-figure, the witnessed
proof-relevant details of them, the organization of blackboard o r paper space and
o f a proof-account, the embodied presence o f a p ro o fs local production cohort,
the pointing and seeing, the texture of proof-specific identifying detail, the
availability of a p ro o fs argument in its generality, the produced and discovered
utility and consistency o f a proof-account’s notation, the pedagogic indications
of beginnings and endings, o f asides and steps, the ‘little’ practical reasoning
that underlies the articulated argument and supports it all this ‘lived-work* fo

an essential and irremediable part of a proof. The disengaged adequacy of the
proof and, therein, o f its proof-account is unavailable without it (Livingston
1987, 112, emphasis added).
Thus Livingston’s point was that the objectivity o f a proof, i.e. the proof’s
"disengaged adequacy", is the outcome o f the lived-work of recognizing that the proof
account reflexively describes that lived-work itself.
The puzzling and amazing thing about the pair-structure of a proof is that neither
proof-account nor its associated lived-work stand alone, nor are they ever
available in such a dissociated state. The produced social object — the proof —
and all of its observed, demonstrable properties, including its transcendental
presence independent of the material particulars o f its proof-account. are
available in and as that pairing. A prover’s work is inseparable from its material
detail although, as the accomplishment of a proof, that proof is seen to be
separable from it (Livingston 1987, 136-137, emphasis added).
Livingston argued that mathematics is unproblematically objective, i.e.,
mathematicians do go about their work without being troubled by the ontological
status o f the objects they work with; however, that objectivity is the practical day-to-
day accomplishment o f mathematicians doing their work. Another way of saying this
is that the very disengagement o f mathematics requires conversational or inscriptive
work.
2.3 Social organization o f knowledge
Dorothy Smith (1987; 1990a; 1990b) has sought to recover and explicate,
through textual analysis, people’s actual social relations. She called this an inquiry
into the "social organization of knowledge," distinguishing it from the "sociology of
knowledge" based on Durkheim (1982) and Mannheim (1936), in which ideas are said

32
to reflect material reality, and more importantly, in which generalizing causal
explanations are sought.
Some of her primary substantive concerns, which clearly are interrelated, are
1) the pervasive use o f reproducible texts in the "relations o f ruling," specifically the
management of people and things under late capitalism; 2) the displacement o f
experience as narratives are inscribed within a conceptual framework; and 3) the use
o f factual methods of reading texts.
Smith’s notion of "textually-mediated social relations" (1990a, 1990b) is a
powerful one. Just as for Marx, industrial machinery represented an accumulation of
workers’ labour power, so there is also much accumulated work which is condensed
or crystallized in texts. A worker using a machine can be far more productive than
one using only their own physical strength; so too, intellectual power is concentrated
and magnified through texts. Bruno Latour, a French theorist working in an
independent but related tradition, described several characteristics o f texts, for
instance, that they
can be reproduced and spread at little cost, so that all the instants of time and all
the places in space can be gathered in another time and place (Latour 1986, 21,
emphasis original).
Such characteristics produce an intellectual "surplus value" (Latour 1990; c.f. Marx
1978).
Smith showed how social relations organize and are organized by texts in a
coherent way. Her analysis of social construction supposed

33
that this world has determinate socially constituted features which are the stable
production of members, and that it is organized in such a way that language and
meaning are integral to its production (Smith 1990b, 90).
The point of "social relations" is that Smith’s inquiry is a materialist one, dealing with
actual practice and committed to avoiding reification.
For Marx, social relations are the actual coordinated activities of actual people
in which the phenomena of political economy arise... social relations are
coordinated or articulated process of action among persons taking place in time
and having determinate form. Social relations are thus sequences which no one
individual completes... The basis of analysis is not the act, the action, or the
actor. It is the social relation coordinating individual activity and giving people's
activity form and determination (Smith 1990b, 94, emphasis added).
Thus in the aspect of the thesis dealing with social relations, I am not studying the
students and the professor in the class, nor am 1 studying the act of writing. 1 am
trying to understand how all of the people in the class are inserted within a system set
up to develop and manage the capacities of people within it. A significant part of this
development is the reproduction o f mathematical skills. Another is the ranking of
students according to performance. This management is mediated by numerous
documents such as assignments and tests.
The general theme I am trying to use from Smith is to look through texts to
find social organization. Her analysis o f the categories of mental illness parallelled
Livingston’s analysis of the rules of proving. Smith wrote, "In analyzing this account
as an account o f mental illness 1 am, I argue, recovering, the structure o f the
conceptual model which I make use o f in recognizing that that is what it is" (Smith
1990b, 16). This resembles Livingston’s project:

34
A prover, in the course o f working out a proof, extracts from the lived-work of
that proof, the accountable structure of that work- that is, he extracts the
specifically remarkable features of the presented proof, and does so against the
background o f practices that both provide for that structure and that,
simultaneously, that structure makes available (Livingston 1986, 14, emphasis
added).
As 1 read a proof in a similar way, 1 come to understand how proofs prove. I use the
concrete proof to understand the structure of ideas which shape it.
The text enters the laboratory, so to speak, canning the threads and shreds of
the relations it is organized by and organizes. The text before the analyst, then,
is not used as a specimen or sample, but as a means o f access, a direct line to
the relations it organizes (Smith 1990b, 4).
Social relations themselves are not directly observable, but anything that is observable
is embedded in this coordinating matrix, and that is how I can recover the social
relations; "the social organization o f the setting is necessarily present in the
description" (Smith 1990b), and that presence consists o f the availability o f objects
that are to be described. The text is oriented by social relations, because the text is
produced by members of the setting.
Smith argued that objective knowledge is constructed by the removal o f
context from a "primary narrative." Once the context has been stripped out, the
substitution of imaginary connectives becomes possible. 1 suggest that this same
mechanism allows a Platonist conceptual structure to be inserted into a mathematical
narrative from which all situated detail has been omitted.
The production o f facts is a process that depends on a whole set o f social
relations. As Smith wrote, "The actual events are not facts. It is the use of proper

35
procedure for categorizing events which transforms them into facts" (Smith 1990b,
25). I am working toward showing how statements progress from needing explicit
justification, i.e., proof from first principles, to being accepted as usable on their
own. Latour wrote that as a statement becomes a fact, its genealogy disappears. A fact
has no history; it stands on its own. A factual reading is possible because of
accumulated "shop-work skills" (Lynch 1992a), as I explained in the last section. That
is how people can cite, for example, the Mean Value Theorem, and have it stand in
for a whole process of reasoning that went into it; that prior work has been condensed
textually in a more powerful form.
The construction of facts is a key concern for me, in that there is a practice
of reading in a "realist-factual" way, which 1 argue reproduces transcendentalism in
mathematics. In using factual methods o f reading,
The relation between the account and what it speaks of is treated as

unmediated. . . The factual account appears as a mere representation of "what
happened/what is" without a trace o f the social organization that produced it and
that intervenes between it and the original lived actuality (Smith 1990a, 79).
According to the factual model, the form of communication should be transparent.
Edward Tufie’s analysis o f graphical mathematical communication, exemplified a
‘factual’ perspective:
Excellence in statistical graphics consists of complex ideas communicated with

clarity, precision and efficiency. Graphical displays should
• show the data
• induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than about the
methodology, graphic design, the technology of graphic production or
something else

36
• avoid distorting what the data have to say. . . .

• serve a reasonably clear purpose: description, exploration, tabulation or
decoration (Tufte 1983, 13).
In the last o f the points I quoted, Tufte recognized that communication may serve
purposes other than description, e.g., decoration; here he stepped outside the factual
model. But his attachment to a "conduit metaphor" (Pimm 1987; Winsor 1990a) was
evident when he measured graphical excellence by the number of bits o f information
per square centimetre.
The factual model depends on a simplistic notion of communication, which 1
called the picture model in section 1.3. Others have criticized it as the "information
transfer" model (Dobrin 1989), "mirror" model (Brodkey and Henry 1992), or
"Augustinian picture" (Wittgenstein 1967).
Laborde, criticizing a related model of communication, found it led to a lack
of appreciation of how students must actively construct meanings o f texts:
A widespread opinion among mathematicians claims that as soon as a

mathematical text is clear, it must be understood by every other mathematician.
This utopian view was (and maybe is) shared at least in France by the
community o f authors o f the official texts about the teaching o f mathematics.
Mathematics is the science of rigour, clarity, precision: all these features appear
through the discourse o f mathematics that tends to be precise, concise and
universal (Laborde 1991, 4).
There was a gap between the characteristics of classroom mathematical discourse and
the linguistic habits of the students she studied; hence, a barrier to understanding.

2.4-Poststructuralism
Much of this thesis concerns interpersonal social interactions, among teacher,
student, and teaching assistant, as these interactions organize and are organized by
texts. In this section, I introduce a poststructuralist perspective, as found in the work
of the French theorist Michel Foucault (1980, 1990; Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983). He
was concerned with texts and language but took a fundamentally different view of
intentionality and the individual agent from that of Smith and most other social
theorists.
Smith insisted, "What m call ‘power’ is always a mobilization of people's
concerted activities" (Smith 1990a, 79-80, emphasis added). She therefore reproached
Foucault for the fact that his concept of "power/knowledge"
is ascribed agency in the absence o f reference to how actual individuals are

active in the underlying social relations that make sense of it (1990a, 70).
Foucault has been criticized for a view which leaves little room for hope. Whichever
way one turns, there is power. As one commentator put it, "Foucault sees history
lurching from one system of domination (based on knowledge) to another" (Ritzer
1992, 369).
Foucault’s account of power has to date been used only sporadically — and
often inaccurately4 — in the literature on mathematics and mathematics education;
4 A search for Foucault and mathematics in the ERIC database located only
McBride’s (1989) paper, which summarized the theory well but in its concrete
examples conflated Foucault with humanist liberal feminism. Similarly, Ernest (1991)
completely misread Foucault’s work, invoking it in support o f a humanist historical

38
however, I find great potential in it for critique o f the politics of mathematics
education.
In this thesis, 1 adapt the problematic Foucault set out in his History of
Sexuality, asking similarly how mathematics is "put into discourse. "5
The central issue, then (at least in the first instance), is not to determine whether
one says yes or no to sex, whether one formulates prohibitions or permissions,
whether one asserts its importance or denies its effects, or whether one refines
the words one uses to designate it; but to account for the fact that it is spoken
about, to discover who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints from
which they speak, the institutions which prompt people to speak about it and
which store and distribute the things that are said. What is at issue, briefly, is
the over-all "discursive fact," the way in which sex is "put into discourse"
(Foucault 1990, 11).
Always intimately connected to the problematic of discourse, Foucault’s
concept o f power is more diffuse than in other theories, for example, Marxist ones.
Power relations are both intentional and nonsubjective. If in fact they are
intelligible, this is not because they are the effect of another instance that
"explains" them, but rather because they are imbued, through and through, with
calculation: there is no power that is exercised without a series of aims and
objectives. But this does not mean that it results from the choice or decision of
an individual subject; let us not look, for the headquarters that presides over its
rationality: neither the caste that governs, nor the groups which control the state
apparatus, nor those who make the most important economic decisions direct the
entire network o f power that functions in a society (and makes il function);
. . . . the logic is perfectly clear, the aims decipherable, and yet it is often the
case that no one is there to have invented them, and few who can be said to
project which the poststructuralist theorist would have utterly rejected. Dowling (1991)
and Walkerdine (e.g., 1988, 1990) are reliable and insightful, however.
5 It may strike the reader as odd to discuss sex and mathematics in the same
breath. This incongruousness is itself worth analyzing. It is also historically specific:
for example, Joseph (1992) reported that the Kama Sutra contained mathematical
problems which one could pose to one’s lover as a sexual stimulus.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n o f t h e c o p y r ig h t o w n e r . F u r t h e r re p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n

39
have formulated them (Foucault 1990, 95, emphasis added).
Thus for example when Ernest wrote that "a new area o f knowledge, the discourse of
human sexuality, was defined by church and state, to serve their own interests"
(Ernest 1991, 92), he was standing Foucault’s argument on its head. It is mu the case
that discourses are imposed by ruling groups for their own benefit. Though
mathematical knowledge is located at the intersection of a dense network of power
relations, it is not clear that there is a group in control which benefits from this
situation to a degree which is at all commensurate with the strength of that discursive
power. Professional mathematicians as individuals or as a group simply do not
appropriate the prestige, money or influence to which their discipline might, in the
neo-Marxist view, entitle them.
Foucault argued,
Power comes from below; that is, there is no binary and all-encompassing
opposition between rulers and ruled at the root of power relations, and serving
as a general matrix. . . One must suppose rather that the manifold relationships
of force that take shape and come into play in the machinery of production, in
families, limited groups, and institutions, are the basis for wide-ranging effects
of cleavage that run through the social body as a whole (Foucault 1990, 94).
"Power from below" should not be seen as blaming the victim for their own
misfortune, for power is a process working from below and above, in which people
negotiate the meanings that are available to them.
Power was, in Foucault’s view, emphatically not a substance of which some
people possessed more and others possessed less, but rather a process. Power did not

40
emanate from an elite which could control the people below, but operated through
discourses in which everyone participated, and which penetrated every facet o f life —
though they were concentrated in the micro-politics of certain key "sites," for
example, the asylum, the doctor’s office, the "technologies o f the self," such as
psychotherapy, personal journals or other tools with which people constructed their
identities. The classroom is another such site.
Within the classroom, for instance, the student is an active and productive
participant in power. Power is made and exists in every social interaction and
classroom (McBride 1989, 41).
Foucault argued for a conception of power as a productive force, one which
"incites and intensifies," not only one which represses. To bring phenomena into a
discursive realm allows new webs of power to enmesh them; for example, the
burgeoning discourse o f gender and mathematics allows not only the positive
consequences of naming problems o f discrimination, but also creates the possibilities
for new forms of control. Willis (1992), for example discussed how well-intentioned
talk of ‘math anxiety’ could reinscribe girls in relations o f subordination.
Foucault thus cautioned us that discourses are not easily reformed. In
particular, to invert the categories of a discourse may in the end reinscribe and
reinforce the effects o f power which one is attempting to oppose. For example, the
discourse of femininity and mathematics says girls cannot retain their femininity while
being as skilled at mathematics as boys are. Feminist programs which simply assert
the opposite, that girls can be feminine and technically proficient, in order to

41
encourage girls into mathematics, have ended up reproducing sexist and heteroscxist
categories of femininity (Whyte 1988).
For another example, in a paper 1 wrote for fellow teaching assistants, 1
motivated my presentation of some constructive feedback techniques by recalling the
message 1 had drawn from Dorothy Buerk's (1985) work: "Almost invariably, people
who feel fearful around mathematics or science do so because of negative experiences
rather than a lack of innate ability" (Yoshioka 1992, 6). 1 stand by the claim, while
noting that it reinscribes the cultural valuation of mathematical intelligence by
separating ‘the normal and deserving person’ from ‘the person who lacks innate
mathematical ability’.
Valerie Walkerdine described the child-centredness movement in education,
as a parallel to Foucault’s critique of the "repressive hypothesis."
Although jchild-centrednessj has been widely associated with progressivism and

hailed as freeing and liberating children from the authoritarianism of ‘chalk-and-
talk’ methods, it can, in fact, be viewed quite differently. It can be argued that
the shift has been not from authoritarianism to liberation, nor from power to no
power, but from overt disciplining to covert disciplining, in which ‘scientific
pedagogy’ plays a major role. . . . Now it was no longer a question of correct
and incorrect answers, but o f the monitoring of what were considered the
characteristics of the ‘normal’ learner. Despite the hope that these methods
would produce freedom, children were observed and monitored as never before
(Walkerdine et at 1989, 21).
In Foucault’s theory, discourses, such as those of modern humanism,
construct "subject positions," for example those of "the individual," "the student,"
"the child," and "the patient." Walkerdine proposed,
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of th e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

42
We might understand subjectivity itself as located in practices, examining the
discursive and signifying methods through which a person becomes "subjected"
in each practice (1990, 51).
The concept of the "subject position" is similar to that of the "role" in modernist
sociology, but without the voluntarism associated with the latter; one can opt to
conform to — or to deviate from — a role, whereas subject positions are not so
malleable (Dowling 1991). In this era in this society, for example, people cannot help
but be perceived as gendered beings. One can adopt ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’
behaviours, but regardless o f one’s choice o f roles, there is an objective social reality
that people are recognized, accounted for and talked about as male and female. That
objectivity o f gender is constructed (largely) in and through texts (Smith 1990a,
1990b), which range from Naming .Y.QW. .gaby to Hockey Night in Canada to the
"sex" code on drivers’ licences. Gendered subject positions are produced, for
example, through the fact that in English the third-person singular pronouns for people
are gendered — with the exception of the traditional "they," which is now
increasingly accepted in formal writing (Bodine 1990) and which I use in this thesis.
The production o f subject positions is not solely the responsibility of a text’s
author, for the readers produce meaning too, partly through the culture they bring to
it.
The text contributes, through its internal structure and external relations, to what
it means to be female/male. . . . [the text] is not to be held entirely responsible
for this meaning; the gender codes always already pre-date the text and enable
its reading (Dowling 1991, 3).

The issue of gender and mathematics has particular resonance partly because
of discourses associating mathematics with rationality and intelligence, and hence in a
spreading web, with social class and so forth. Dowling demonstrated,
The textbooks thus effectively define or construct equivalences between "high

ability" and "high social class" and between "low ability" and "low social class."
As with the gendering of mathematics. . . these are not roles that subjects can
choose to play or not to play, they define what it means to be high or low
"ability" and this has to do with social and not cognitive "qualities" (Dowling
1991, 6).
Thus 1 found for example, in the error analysis in chapter 7, several students were
willing to defend their intelligence by blaming their errors on carelessness,
forgetfulness, or being in a hurry. The association between the production of the
mathematical knower and the production of mathematical knowledge will be a key
issue in that chapter. I share the problematic Dowling laid out in his response to
McBride:
1 want to break with the student/curriculum dualism by considering how the

mathematics curriculum, in particular, might be understood as contributing to
the constitution o f the subject.6
I find that power in mathematics is to a significant degree a matter of self-disciplining,
through ideas o f what it is to be a good mathematician; thus Walkerdine’s problematic
is similarly central:
How do our ideas of "real mathematics" and of mathematical "truth" become

incorporated into the "truth" about the human subject which is used in the
regulation of the social (Walkerdine 1990, s?'.
6 Following Dowling, I am also "using ‘subject’ throughout this paper to refer to

human subject, i.e., not curriculum subject" (Dowling 1990, 7 n .l).
with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

44
T o summarize, several poststructuralist ideas inform this thesis: 1) the overall
problematic of the discursive fact of Mathematics, 2) the concept o f power from
below, i.e., power as process, including self-discipline, 3) the production o f the
subject position o f "the math student," i.e., humans as subject and object of
knowledge, 4) the difficulty of resistance to the effects of power, and incidentally 5)
opposition to a narrative of historical progress.
2.5 Conclusion
1 have presented the major theorists in order of the level of critique found in
their work. Wittgenstein was fond of saying, "Philosophy must leave everything as it
is" (1967), though his potential implications for radical politics are a matter o f some
dispute (Bloor 1992; Lynch 1992b). Garfinkers writings challenged the conservatism
of structural functionalist sociology, but on a methodological level only; as a
theoretical move, ethnomethodology has maintained a policy of "indifference" toward
such structural considerations as class and power. . . Its critics are arguing about
the nature o f the best theory of the social world, whilst ethnomethodology is
concerned with the possibility that the social world can be theorized at all
(Sharrock and Anderson 1986, 104-105).
Finally, of course, Smith and Foucault were very directly concerned with people’s
insertion in relations of power.
In this chapter and throughout the thesis, there is also a dialectic between
agency and structure, between micro and macro phenomena; neither is seen as
independent o f the other. Smith was explicitly "seeking access to the extended or

macro-relations organizing the society through an analysis of the micro-social" (Smith
1990b, 10). Ethnomethodology, often seen as a micro-sociology, is actually a
"foundational" inquiry instead, according to its practitioners, ethnomethodology
cannot conceive a separation of the face-to-face situation and the social structure
since these are mutually elaborative: one cannot establish what is really
happening in a face-to-face encounter except by recognition of it as an-
encounter-in-a-structure. Consequently the treatment of ethnomethodology as a
micro-sociology involves its placement in a dualism which it maintains is
untenable (Sharrock and Anderson 1984, 104, emphasis added).
For Foucault, the notion of the individual was a profoundly problematic one, and his
theory proposed that discourses were both prior to individual agents, and also
productive of the very notion of the modem individual.
Finally, 1 wish to emphasize the importance and the power of written
representations in the production of objective knowledge. The literature in
mathematics education (e.g., Pimm 1987; Borasi and Siegel 1990; Dowling 1991;
McBride 1989; Sterrett 1990; Powell and Ldpez 1989) has followed the "linguistic
turn" in other social sciences; however, writing is still under-researched compared to
classroom talk. And aside from proponents of computer technology, few people
discuss mathematics in terms which stress the importance of the use of tools. In
contrast to the laboratories of physical scientists, especially in an era of Big Science,
the needs o f most mathematical researchers are indeed modest, but that should not
distract us from the importance of tools in mathematical practice. Even in Plato’s
Meno. Socrates used diagrams drawn in the sand to teach the slave-boy. Thus 1 will

46
call attention to the sheer materiality o f the working equipment of the class, such as
chalk and paper. To do otherwise, to ignore the role of tools, is part o f the move
toward idealist mysticism, as exemplified by the eminent intuitionist mathematician,
Felix Brouwer, who said, "Mathematics is a languageless activity of the human mind"
(cited in Pimm 1987, 197).
These then are the main theoretical issues organizing the thesis, and now it is
time to locate my specific texts at a particular and concrete site, as 1 will do in the
next chapter.
Then in Part Two, Reading, I will turn to my empirical materials. ‘We’ will
have before ‘us’ a set of texts. Each reader will bring their own ways o f reading
them; readings will be performed by individual social actors, conditioned by the
institutional location o f the actors. Students, teaching assistant, professor, examining
committee members, other readers of this thesis and 1, we all have different positions
relative to one another, which are coordinated through texts.

CHAPTER 3
A CONSTRUCTIVIST CLASSROOM
God created the natural numbers; all the rest is the work of man.
Leopold Kronecker, circa 1880
1 would tend to say that everything is the work of man.

Kevin, a first-year mathematics student,
reacting to the quotation above
One of my major arguments is that mathematical objectivity is best
understood as produced in the specificity and concreteness o f a particular setting. Just
how that setting might be visible in o r might influence a worked-up proof-object is
open to debate, given that the prover’s goal is precisely to produce an argument which
will appear convincing to anyone regardless of time or place; however, to ignore the
setting is to foreclose discussion and to advance by fiat a transcendentalist explanation.
When one lacks access to the setting, it is hard indeed to avoid thinking of proof in
completely abstract terms. Therefore, it is necessary for me to look beyond the texts,
i.e., the material proofs I will examine in Part Two, and to describe the network of
social relations in which the texts were produced and became examinable by me and
by the readers of this thesis.
In this chapter, 1 have three objectives: 1) to describe my access to the texts
47

48
in question, and my other data-collection activities, 2) to outline the social
constructivist theory of mathematical education, and 3) to describe the particular
calculus course in relation to constructivist theory.
3.1 Methods
3.1.1 The Site
I collected the pieces of mathematical writing in one of the sections of a first-
year honours calculus course at a large Canadian university, during the period from
September to December o f 1992. The course, which 1 call ‘Math 120’, is required for
honours mathematics majors, and involves a rigorous and quite abstract treatment of
the properties o f the real number system1, limits and continuity and derivatives.
The professor, who will be identified here by the pseudonym ‘Joan Lewis’,
taught using constructivist methods, which will be described in the second half o f this
chapter. There were 27 students in the section at the start of the term; all but three
completed the course. Marking of most assignments was done by a graduate teaching
assistant (TA), ‘Don’, who also ran two weekly tutorial hours.
The lecture periods took place twice a week for an hour and fifteen minutes
during the first time slot o f the morning, from 8:30 to 9:45. They were held in a
narrow room which sloped gently toward three blackboards at the front. The chair-
1 ‘Real’ numbers are no more or less real than any other type of number. ‘Real’ is
a technical term distinguishing these from other numbers which for historical reasons
are called ‘imaginary’.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n prohib ited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

desks, arranged in nine rows of nine, were bolted to the floor.
Students also met independently in study groups in various locations on
campus.
3.1.2 Access and Data Collection
There were three principal types o f data for this study: 1) written course-
work, 2) my field-notes on the classroom and 3) printed materials such as the
textbook. Additionally, I conducted an audiotaped interview with one student, and I
reviewed a questionnaire designed by Joan, which she had administered on the first
day so that she could get to know the students in the class.
With Joan’s permission I observed the class incognito on the first two days.
During the third day, Joan introduced me as a graduate student doing thesis research.
1 spoke to the class about my project, and distributed the "Research Brief" (sec
Appendix 2) and "Informed Consent Form — General Participation" (see Appendix 3)
to every student.
When I was introduced, and several times subsequently, Joan and 1
emphasized 1 was not the TA and 1 would have no involvement in marking/grading. 1
saw no evidence at all o f any confusion among students on this point.
Twenty-two of the twenty-seven students signed the consent form, giving me
permission to read and photocopy their writings for the course, and all of these
students completed the course. Joan kept a list o f names o f students who had
with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

50
submitted the general consent form. After class Joan passed on writings from the
students who had given me access, and 1 photocopied what 1 needed, usually before
Joan passed them to Don. Once I realized the importance for my research of the
written interactions between Don and the students, 1 collected additional marked
assignments.
Students in the course produced several types of writing. The students wrote
"one-minute papers" anonymously giving Joan feedback at the end of some classes,
assignments, short quizzes, an "error analysis" assignment (explained in chapter 7),
midterm tests in October and November, and a final exam.
I observed ten classes in the first eight weeks o f term, taking detailed field-
notes. I wrote what Joan, the students, and I said, as close to verbatim as I could,
giving preference to idiomatic reproduction over completeness, i.e., verbatim quotes
with gaps rather than a more comprehensive paraphrase in my own words. Since it
was not possible to keep up with the pace of the discussion, and I reached a level of
saturation in recording the professor’s talk, 1 shifted my attention to students’ remarks;
however, classroom talk was always background data for me.
I copied some solutions that students wrote on the board. In early classes, I
noted seating and general classroom set-up. 1 dated and labelled all notes and
supplementary materials such as assignments handed out in class. 1 transferred some of
my notes to computer soon after class, keeping the originals on file.
On one occasion, I took notes on the working-up of a proof from the stage of

rough outline to a finished neat solution. As 1 will describe further in chapter 5, I
used clear acetate sheets and colored overhead markers to record the ordered
development of board-work, with its continual layering o f insertions, erasures and
substitutions.
3.1.3 Ethical Precautions
1 was concerned that students’ confidentiality be protected and that they not
be pressured into anything they were uncomfortable with.
In this thesis, I do not mention any personal information which would
identify the members o f the class. Since assignments necessarily bore the students’
true names, written work is identified by pseudonyms I assigned to all participating
students. This was one measure to ensure that participation in the study neither
increased nor decreased the student’s grade for the course. In transcribing the
interview with ‘Kevin’, 1 used pseudonyms and altered or deleted identifying personal
information. The interview tape remains in my custody.
Students could withhold even anonymous pieces o f written work from my
research project by so indicating on those pieces.
1 did not communicate with the TA other than to get his permission to use his
marking. In any oral or written communication with Joan Lewis 1 did not identify
students’ work by their true names, except in the context of events which happened in
public in class. She and I did not discuss any individual student’s written work until

52
the completion of the course.
3.2 Description of the class
The goal of this half of the chapter is primarily to provide an understanding
of the practices in the class in order to enable readers to see the texts o f Part Two in a
more grounded way than would otherwise be possible. As Livingston said, a
disengaged proof-account bec.mes available only through situated work. My
description here is at a higher level of generality and abstraction than Livingston might
advise, but it will, 1 hope, suggest the dynamism of the classroom from which my
textual data came.
First I will present portions of an audiotaped interview (921002) with one of
the students, ‘Kevin’, in Joan’s section of Math 120. 1 will then present, in relation to
the theory of constructivist mathematical education, several salient characteristics of
Joan’s teaching.
3.2.1 A student’s view
My original research design, as the Research Brief (Appendix 2) shows,
focused on students’ experiences with mathematics in high school and university, and
their "ways of knowing" (Belenky et al 1985). 1 planned to interview two male and
two female students; however, after I transcribed the interview with the first student,
who happened to be male, the focus of my research changed, so that ftirther interview
data became unnecessary.

When 1 transcribed the interview in October, I used conventions' (Appendix
4) from the field of conversational analysis (Heritage 1984), because at the time 1 was
particularly interested in the detail of conversational practice in the interview itself, by
which Kevin and I would construct our understandings of his mathematical experience.
Our interview included discussion of his experiences of doing mathematics in
different settings, his reactions to certain statements about the philosophy of
mathematics, such as the one in this chapter’s epigraph, and his own "ways of
knowing." Here he explained the difference between high school and university ways
of doing mathematics.
Alan: Um:: do you feel that you’re equally good at all: different areas of
math?
Kevin: (5.0) Um (3.0) well so fa:r, at least in high school, yeah, Because
most of it was just uh "follow the rules." An’if y ’follow the rules uh
you’ll get the answer.
A: Right.
K: Sometimes you need a little bit of: imagination to try an’ tackle a
problem but— but for me it was the same thing, either al—algebra or
calculus— and 1 didn’t take finite.
A: Uh-huh.
K: Um, it’s a little bit different now, in (.) first year in the calculus uh
course because uh we’re not (.) following the rules really— we’re—
we— we— we— have the rules but we halta now (.) choose which
ones to: to use, um and there’s really (.) hardly any direction given,
whereas in an algebra problem you see it, you know (.) what you did
in class = You know exactly what the steps to follow— same thing in
calculus, you know what steps to follow.
A: Right.
2 These conventions are used only for the interview with Kevin, not for dialogue
rendered from field-notes.

54
K: So, I— in high school they were about the same.
A: Uh-huh. So, so are the problems different then or what— what’s
different about the:: uh— You said "lack of direction",
K: Well, may, just with what we’ve dene uh. Essentially you’re given (.)
something to prove. Uh with the list of (.) twelve things’ to fall back
on. Um but (.) you have very little— like from question to question
you have very little direction as to which one (.) to start (.) with (.)
like— like f rexample uh axiom one or axiom seven or— or
something like that. Whereas before um we were just given (.)
questions (with like) with algebra > essentially all you’re doing < is
(.) > isolating the variable < . And you know everything to da. You
can y ’know multiply both sides, whatever. Uh, with calculus yer::
essentially (.) finding the derivative. And you know (.) the power
rule— all those rules. So y ’just— it’s almost like— with each subject,
before y’just do one thing, and you’re all— you’re halfway there, at
least (92i 002 Side 1, pp.2-3).
The contrast between high school math and Math 120 is striking. Before, the official
model of mathematics was algorithmic. In high school, Kevin could simply follow the
rules and get the answer, he said, whereas mathematics in this course required more
judgement and creativity.
Alan: What do you think— how do you think high school math and
university math are different? an’ how are they similar?
Kevin: Um well so far they’re different in the sense that (.) in high school we
just do the problems um with at least (.) even if we’re shown the
proofs we don’t worry about them (.) like we’re not gonna (we’ll)
take’em for granted. So far here it seems like we have to (.) in
university we have to um (.) I guess do it for ourselves (.) um
that’s— as far as curriculum (.) ’n’ also as far as teaching methods
um calculus one um 120 is different in that it’s a small class, but I
also take finite, and uh there you’re left out on your own (.) it’s not
(.) it’s not like a classroom setting in which you c’n— y’know go
t’your classmates (.) generally and uh work something through
(921002 Side 2, p.3).
’ Kevin was referring to a list (Appendix 1) o f 12 axioms about the real numbers.
It was used frequently in class, especially in the first few weeks,

55
Here Kevin has described the collaborative atmosphere in 120, and his sense
that one must look critically at the propositions one is given.
Alan: Um okay, so any sim-similarities between high school and university

math “that you think’re important0?
Kevin: N: (5.0) Not— similarities uh?
A: D’ya feel like you’re in something |totally different now?|
K: Ill’s not—11 guess level of difficult— I
dunno if level o f difficulty isn’t really that much— as far as the actual
math maybe is not that much different. Um, for me the biggest
difference is just the teaching sortof atmosphere.
A: Uh-huh.
K: And but (.) everything else 1 would think the basic math is about the
same, I can’t think o f any— I can’t think of anysignificant
similarities— I dunno if that makes sense.
A: So:: what— what— uh:: what’s significant about the (.) the teaching
style?
K: Well (.) 1 guess (.) with (.) before y ’know when the class same
teacher he knows you, you know him, obviously a lot more (.) 1 guess
comfortable um (.) a lot more attention and if y’have a problem y’ju s’
go up an’ no problem, but here, uh at least in finite, it um (.) the
teacher just pretty much talks, the lecturer just lectures and get
whatevery’can. Even— even if they’re available afterwards it— the
lecture is (.) is designed to be non-interactive, it’s designed
A: [right
K: [to be "I’m here to talk, you just listen.
And even if y’have— if you have problems well we’ll talk ’bout it
later but for these— for this hour (.) jus’ listen." Whereas in (.) in
high school you’re always (.) able to put up your hand ’n’
[say "What’s goin’ on here?”
A; j right
K: "Can you jus’— ju s’ take that slower?"
A: So what about calculus?
K: Well calculus is uh (.) not quite as interactive maybe not yetcuz we
really don’t (.) know each other very well (.) as well, but um (.) um
(4.0) >1— it tends uh— 1 dunno it’s uh— (7.0) 1 dunno she’s
friendly ((laugh))
A: yeah ((laugh))
K: Okay. She won’t uh (bawl you)— like shewon’t get angry— I guess
if y ’had a question you you would— no one has done it (.) or not too

56
many people have done it yet, y’know interrupting— actually she has
said the basis of her class is everything doing— being done together
so 1 uh it’s I guess diff— totally different (.) um
Ilike, whereas in high school
A; |Different from?
K: In high school the person talks and we (.) are allowed or we feel very
comfortable interrupting and he’ll feel very comfortable uh explaining
and stopping um. In calculus it seems like the whole basis is our
interruptions or our— our— our what we have to say, so I guess that
makes it quite (.) even different from (.) in that maybe it’s the other
extreme
A: uh-huh.
K: it’s like on one hand we have the lecture and in the middle we have
maybe the high school type thing and on the other we have uh Joan
((laugh)) uh (921002 Side 2, pp.4-5).
Perhaps surprisingly, Kevin described Math 120 as even more interactive in its
organizational design than his old high school class, though the more distant personal
relationships in university made the interaction lesser initially. In the constructivist
class, the very basis of learning was the students’ interactions. Also, Kevin’s use of
Joan’s first name signified her approachable status. In his experience, she was friendly
and patient, in that he thought she would not get angry at interruptions. In short,
Kevin’s view o f Math 120 was a very positive one.
3.2.2 Constructivist theory
Constructivism is a general label for a host of theories, philosophies and
practices, whose scope includes at least mathematics, psychology, philosophy and
education. These approaches bear a "family resemblance" (Wittgenstein 1967) to one
another, rather than necessarily sharing a unique set of principles.

57
I cannot recall hearing Joan refer to herself as "a constructivist," but she
certainly described mathematics as a human construction. Many of Joan’s techniques
were not exclusively constructivist, but were compatible with constructivism.
The point of identitying Joan’s classroom as constructivist is to clarify that
she was developing an alternative approach to knowledge, and a less hierarchical
classroom. Also, after I have presented the case studies, 1 will return to a discussion
of social constructivist philosophy as a theory o f mathematical objectivity.
To suggest the sense of the term, "constructivism," 1 will quote some people
who, to varying degrees, identity their work as constructivist. The influential social
psychological work of Belenky et al identified "the basic insights of constructivist
thought: All knowledge is constructed, and the knower is an intimate part of the
known" (1986, 137), At one mathematics educators’ conference, a discussion group
used the following working definition o f constructivism: "a theory of knowledge
acquisition which holds that knowledge is constructed by the learner" (Reid 1991, 81).
Since constructivist teachers are continually learning about new ways of
teaching and also learning mathematics from their students, constructivism is also a
research orientation in mathematics education.
According to this perspective, no knowledge exists which transcends human

experience. Thus, to explain the construction of mathematical ideas, we need to
look at how our characteristic ways o f viewing, acting, and cooperating in the
world change and at how this change is communicated to others (Confrcy 1991,
130, emphasis added).
This human element has been stressed by many writers more loosely associated with

constructivism. Buerk (1985), for example, identified mathematics as a "human
construction," without using the term "constructivism." She drew upon the widely-
used typology of "separate" and "connected" ways of knowing (Belenky et al 1986),
and showed that mathematics is generally taught in the former manner, but practised
by professional mathematicians in the latter manner. Similarly, Rogers set forth
an alternative approach to the teaching of mathematics, one which is rooted not

in the authoritarian and imposed style which distances and silences, but in a style
which encourages direct access and engagement, free creative expression and
ownership o f subject.
Another element in this approach involves demystifying the doing of
mathematics. This includes such things as calling student’s attention to
mathemat' .s as a creation o f the human mind, making visible the means by
which mathematical ideas come into being and the process by which they are
polished for public consumption (Rogers 1992, 83).
In mathematics education, the label o f "constructivist" is often associated with
a tradition influenced by developmental psychology, both Piaget’s more individualist
and Vygotskii’s (1986) more socially-oriented varieties. This theory of learning leads
to teaching techniques which reject the notion that teachers are in possession of
absolute truth which they must transfer to students.
Much or most of the teaching and learning are collaborative enterprises, between
teachers and students, and among students themselves. Teaching and learning are
thus multidirectional and interactive, rather than one-way and hierarchical
(Reeves and Ney 1992, 196)
One example of such interactive teaching techniques was described by Rogers, who
gave students an opportunity to construct their own knowledge in the mathematics
class, including "think-write-pair-share," adapted from Davidson et al (1986).

59
In class, students are presented with a question, or given a segment of the text to
read. They work independently at first, put their thoughts and ideas down in
writing, and then form pairs to discuss. This provides support for those students
who are unsure o f their ideas or who have a fear of appearing foolish before the
class. It has the effect of increasing participation and involving all students in
the affairs of the class (Rogers 1992, 85).
A key tenet of constructivism is that mathematical work is invention, rather
than discovery of a pre-existing structure. Wittgenstein (1978, 362) expressed this
tenet with his complaint, "Why do you always want to look at mathematics under the
aspect of finding and not of doing?"
Paul Ernest has set out probably the most systematic exposition of social
constructivism as a philosophy of mathematics and of mathematics education.
Social constructivism. . . draws on conventionalism, in accepting that human

language, rules and agreement play a key role in establishing and justifying the
truths of mathematics. It takes from quasi-empiricism its fallibilist epistemology,
including the view that mathematical knowledge and concepts develop and
change. It also adopts Lakatos’ philosophical thesis that mathematical knowledge
grows through conjectures and refutations, utilizing a logic of mathematical
discovery4. Social constructivism is a descriptive as opposed to a prescriptive
philosophy of mathematics, aiming to account for the nature of mathematics
understood broadly. . . .
The grounds for describing mathematical knowledge as a social
construction and for adopting this name are threefold:
(i) The basis of mathematical knowledge is linguistic knowledge, conventions
and rules, and language is a social construction.
(ii) Interpersonal social processes are required to turn an individual’s
subjective knowledge, after publication, into accepted objective
mathematical knowledge.
(iii) Objectivity itself will be understood to be social (Ernest 1991, 42).
Ernest drew parallels between social constructivist philosophy of mathematics
4 This term is Lakatos’ adaptation of Popper’s (1968) "logic of scientific

discovery" and does not imply discovery o f Platonic objects.

and sociology o f mathematics (Restivo 1985), skeptical philosophy such as that of
Hume, and psychology (e.g., von Glasersfeld 1984). He enlisted social constructivism
in a historical project which brings to mind the tradition o f Copernicus and Darwin.
Perhaps it is time for humanity to give up its sense o f certainty. This may be the
next stage of decentration which human maturation requires (1991, xi).
Finally, social constructivism as a theory o f mathematics and mathematics education
has been described by its proponents as more liberating than absolutist theories; Ernest
associated it with a democratic socialist "public educator ideology." He wrote, "Social
constructivism denies that mathematical knowledge is value-free, fust because it
rejects the categorical distinction between science and mathematics, and science is
imbued with human values" (1991, 96). I will return in my concluding chapter to
social constructivism, to put forward some points o f comparison with my own
perspective.
3.2.3 Classroom practices
Some key elements of Joan’s approach to teaching are broadly shared within
a social constructivist model of mathematics education: 1) anti-authoritarianism, 2)
focus on the process o f mathematics, e.g., encouraging cooperation among students,
as well as on the product, 3) encouragement o f multiple solutions, and 4) focus on
language as a learning tool. In the next subsection, 3 .2 .4 ,1 will address how she
produced concepts of certainty in a way which I argue was not fully compatible with
constructivism.

The quotations that will follow may appear to be taken out of context because
they are so brief, but one of the notable features of Joan’s expression of a
constructivist approach was its informality. Rather than deliver a sustained exposition
of constructivism, she continually interjected reflective remarks about the nature of
mathematics while she working through problems. This would seem to be an
especially effective and appropriate way to talk about the theme of constructivism, as
students would be able to associate her theoretical points with the classroom practice.
1) Anti-authoritarianism
Joan took steps to reduce the power differential between professor and
students. She told them on the first day,
I want to call you by your first names and you’re welcome to use mine. 1 hate
‘Professor Lewis’ but you can use it if you have to. ‘Dr. Lewis’ is OK or ‘Ms
Lewis.’ Not ‘Miss’ and not ‘M rs.’ but any of the others will do (920915.5).
She talked personally about her own experiences as a mathematician and mathematics
teacher, revealing herself to be fallible.
How many o f you went into mathematics so you could avoid writing essays?
None o f you? Well, I did (920915.4).
I really could never understand applied mathematics. Pure mathematics was

great, but applied? 1 failed. I copied the assignments for a whole term
(920915.5).
To facilitate critical feedback on her teaching, Joan used "one-minute
papers," which students wrote anonymously at the end of selected lessons. 1 collected
one set o f papers, in response to her request for "two things you like about the class

62
and two things you want to change’’5 (921006.8). One such paper showed that Joan
did not assume the role of the all-knowing expert.
I like the fact that when you are doing a problem on the board you let the class
kind of "take over" & we come up with the answers with your help. It’s not just
you standing there saying "This is the answer, just because it is. Trust me!"
(1MP.22)
Joan explicitly rejected as elitist the notion that mathematics was a discipline
only for the gifted few.
It’s not my aim to get rid of a third or half of you. I want to see all of you do
really well. That’s part of the idea o f the grading scheme (920915.3).
As 1 will show in chapter 7, Joan’s intentions to make the class as egalitarian as
possible were partially subverted by the "power from below" operating through the
expectations which students brought to the class. They already had a strong idea of
what it was to be good math students, and to be a good math teacher, so they
interpreted Joan’s actions in ways that were beyond her control. One student must
have approved of Joan, for they somehow managed to interpret Joan’s teaching style
— which was in my view quite non-linear — as follows: "1 like the fact that she
explains everything step by step without leaving anything out" (IM P. 18). Good math
teachers explain things step by step, Joan is a good math teacher, therefore Joan must
explains things step by step. Q.E.D.!
21 Process-orientation
5 The papers are labelled below as "IM P"; I numbered them for ease of reference.
1 have followed their original spelling and grammar throughout.

63
Joan emphasized that in learning mathematics, the process was at least as
important as the final product. After the class had worked through a proof, she said,
That— believe it or not— is how mathematicians prove theorems. It’s a mess.

And then we pretty it up (920924.5).
She distinguished between the ‘messy’ process of a proof in construction and the
polished publishable proof as found in most textbooks; clarifying how to get from the
former to the latter was an important goal o f the board-work lesson which 1 describe
in chapter 5. Joan argued that polished proofs were not very ..elpful pedagogically,
and objected to the fact that "math books often don’t let you see where the answer
came from" (920922.3). She discussed strategies for getting "unstuck," sr. u as
working backwards from what one knew would be the last line of a proof (920922.3).
The course built in ways for students to form study groups and to work
together on problems. Here are several o f the many occasions when she encouraged
cooperation among students:
1 encourage you, I implore you to work together on your homework.... on your

own, however you work — that may be in front of the TV, I used to work that
way, though I can’t get anything done that way any more (920915.5, emphasis
original).
Let’s not turn this into another competitive arena (920915.3).
If you don’t already have a friend in class, find one — that’s where your ideas
will start to click (920924.5).
Many students said in their one-minute papers that they liked the opportunities to work

64
together or have group discussions instead of only lectures, e.g., "class is not spent
strictly teaching, more a session o f working together to solve various questions"
(IM P. 15). However, some students found the class too open-ended. One wrote,
I would like a little bit more direction with proofs and in discussions. 1 feel lost
when I do things on my own, because I'm not sure where to begin. Sometimes
more structure Lectures could be of use. Note: What I’m trying to say is that I
like discussion but should be mix, with a little more structure (1MP.1).
The marking scheme was set up to allow students to learn from their mistakes
without being penalized. Joan explained,
There will be about 8 written assignments, maybe not quite that many. Those
will be graded by Don— no, not graded. He’ll actually write comments on your
assignment but won’t assign a letter grade. You’ll receive full credit for handing
it in and making an honest attempt (920915.5).
Joan validated one student who had volunteered that he didn’t understand what an
additive identity was; she said he was "an honest man" (920917.2). She gave students
permission not to know the answer to the questions she asked. Many students
appreciated this recognition that they wouldn’t understand everything the moment it
was presented.
If we don’t know how to do something or get stuck on something, its okay.

W e’re not made to feel stupid because we don’t understand (1MP.9).
3) Multiplicity
Contrary to the popular stereotype that mathematics is a subject where there
is only one right answer and a unique path to it, Joan emphasized the multiplicity of
possible good approaches. When a student asked, "Will we get part marks or zero if

65
we don’t get the whole answer?" Joan replied,
Oh, part marks, . . and in a proof there is no final answer. . . One thing 1
won’t be doing is providing a model solution. I used to do that and 1 don’t
believe in it anymore. There are many ways to solve problems and 1 don’t want
to regard my solution as a model. Now if in the middle of the term you feel a
need for solutions, I ’ll help you arrange that. A group of you can be responsible
for writing up a set o f solutions and I’ll help copy and distribute it. But I won’t
be doing that with my own solutions (920915.6).
(I will return in chapter 6 to the role of model solutions.) Joan told students repeatedly
that there might be more than one right answer. She said,
One o f the most frustrating things working with someone is they don’t always
think the same or come up with the same thing as you. Don’t tell them they’re
wrong and stupid, they might just have a different way (920924.3).
Many students appreciated this aspect of discussion, e.g.,
Questions and sugestions from the class are also helpfull, they bring out ideas
that I didn’t know existed or that 1 didn’t know they were problem areas
(1MP.19).
Beginning from the first day that the class worked on any mathematical
content, Joan called attention to the ways in which aspects of mathematical notation
were mere conventions, for example, both ways of writing the fraction 1/3 as a
decimal, 0.3 or 0 .3 , were right (920917.1). When a student wrote a general
statement about the real numbers as ”x • 1 = 1 •x = x for all real x ,” Joan used the
occasion to point out,
You don’t have to use the same symbol. In calculus we tend to use x but there’s
nothing written in concrete about this. There acg standard symbols, like N
(920917.2).
Joan also institutionalized, through the marking scheme for the course and
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

66
through the use of a variety of teaching techniques, recognition of the fact that people
have different learning styles. On the first day, she said,
I’m going to be trying a variety of teaching methods. Students might resist and
dislike them at first... There are 28 different kinds of learners in this course
(920915.4).
She noted two styles of learners: one type would peak late in the term and do well on
the final exam, while the other would produce solid work throughout the term but
would panic in the high-pressure situation ot an exam. By allowing the student’s grade
to be determined by whichever of two formulas turned out better, she avoided
imposing her own preferred style on other learners.
4) Communicating as a way of learning
In a traditional pedagogical approach, the communicative aspects of
mathcmatic are downplayed, as the teacher uses a simple model of cognition and
communication, in which understanding is believed to be separate from
communicating, so that students’ talk or writing is simply a matter of demonstrating
knowledge, i.e., expressing ideas that are already fully formed in the student’s mind;
in contrast, according to a constructivist perspective, learners use talk and writing "as
a way of knowing," to actively formulate and internalize concepts (Powell and Ldpez
1989). Borasi and Siegel also challenged the dominant model.
Traditionally, reading has been interpreted as the act o f extracting the message
encoded in a written text by the author. This view of reading has recently been
challenged by the theoretical models of the reading process which portray
reading as a transaction involving reader, text and context (1990, 9).

In the next chapter, I will return to ways of reading mathematical texts. The variety of
these ways can undermine the idea that communication is a simple transfer of content.
Instead, I argue that it requires interpretation; however, technical reading is indeed
different from other types of reading. Joan said to the class, "I don’t assume you
know how to read mathematics. It’s not the same as reading novels, reading short
stories, reading critical articles. It’s a skill w e’ll try to develop. Do you have any
ideas how to read a mathematics book? A student answered, "You tend to read it
rather slowly. . . You try to work things through at least in your head if not on
paper" (920915.3). Joan also assigned alternative types of writing work, one of which,
the error analysis, is described in chapter 7. She said,
I won’t assign essays but 1 will sometimes assign writing,.. I’m going to assign
reading exercises (920915.4).
3.2.4 The bases o f certainty
In this section, I discuss a specific aspect of Joan’s class, the way it organized
the concept of certainty. At one level, certain* based in the ability to solve
practical problems, i.e., to make things work in the, ‘real world’.
Kevin: a couple o ’times I (.) helped my father— iin.e > h c works in a

machine shop< an’: sometimes the:— the directions he gets ar— are
wrong, and he has a sense that they’re wrong, the measurements arc
wrong.
A: uh-huh.
K: (3.0) so— he says this. Like he already knows, > but he wants to
make sure cuz I just recently took a— like this< trigonometry, so > I
was able to help him < a couple of times there

68
Kevin’s father knew but he wanted to ‘make sure’ so he appealed to his son’s high
school trigonometry. Similarly, Lave (1986) documented people’s ability to perform
the -alculations they needed in everyday life, though often they did not use the school-
taught algorithm end were incapable of solving the ‘academic’ reformulations of their
daily problems.
At another level, the yardstick of certainty is not visible in at all the same
way. When 1 was a first-year mathematics student, something 1 personally found
exciting and liberating was the questioning of mathematical ideas I had taken for
granted. Similarly in Math 120, the ‘natural’ objectivity o f mathematics was called
into question. Statements which had once been simple facts became doubtful. For
example, illustrating a typical resistance to formal rigor at the beginning of the course,
one student who had tried the homework, to prove -(-*)=,*, for any number x, said,
H1 didn’t know how to prove it with these axiom things. 1 mean it’s obvious"
(920922.1).
By the end of the term, what was "obvious" had been problematized.
Students were prepared to ask "How do you know?" For example, one student asked
for a justification of the claim that -0 -0, Joan replied, "God, I’m making you as
picky as me, that’s great!"
One of Joan's practices was to ask the students to get into the habit o f
imagining a critic looking over their shoulder.
I'm not sure 1 like the idea of some evil monster sitting on your shoulder but
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69
think of me as a friendly nagger, someone who’s constantly saying, |in a sing
song voice] "1 don’t believe you" (921001.1).
The ‘critic’ was an important device for helping people to articulate the problem, and
to develop an "internal monitor" (Mason et al 1985). This technique captured the fact
that one could struggle to explain the details of an argument convincingly to a
skeptical listener, and then have the experience of ‘clicking’ — the obscure would
become clear, often very suddenly. As Joan put it,
Once you’ve sweated blood over it, you may think "It’s obvious," and "Why
didn’t 1 see that?" (921001.4)
Here is the central paradox identified by Livingston: the solution really is obvious
after one has done the work, and yet until the work has been done, there is nothing to
see.
A variety of philosophies of mathematics can underlie the teaching of
mathematics (Lerman 1990; Thompson 1984; Thom 1973). An important one is
formalism, based on the Hilbert program of translating mathematics into uninterpreted
formal systems (Ernest 1991, 10). Strictly speaking, the axioms of the system are
defined without reference to what they might mean intuitively.
As I will argue in the rest of the thesis, mathematical concepts were actively
produced by the members of the class through their day-to-day practices of doing
mathematics. So along with the explicit philosophical remarks Joan made, the course
developed the students’ sense of the nature of mathematics, through their ways of
working on mathematical problems. It is in this sense that the class embodied a

70
formalist approach as well as a constructivist approach.
A key issue in this thesis, particularly chapter 7, will be the production of the
knowcr of mathematical knowledge. Joan prepared students for this process of
induction into the community by saying,
The course will start you on the road to being a mathematician, even if that may
not eventually be your goal. It’ll help you start to think mathematically
(920915. ).
Kevin told me in our interview that the course description had set up expectations that
the course would teach students to think the way mathematicians think. 1 asked him to
clarify w hat he m eant.
Alan: So w— what >w hadduz’t mean to think th ’way a mathematician

thinks < ?
Kevin: Well uh starting from (.) basic premises and then jus’ working very
slowly and ((laugh)) tediously
A: ((laugh))
K: through urn so that you c ’n— uh s’you can ta— eventually take > w ’ll
not really take it for granted < but not not worry about them so much
’nd go into higher ’n higher, more complicated uh levels confident (.)
that at least they’re consistent with your (.) earlier assumptions.
(921002 Side 2, p.3).
Kevin’s mention of working "tediously" was referring to the initial weeks of Math
120, when the class spent much of its time proving elementary propositions about the
real number system, in a very painstaking way, as chapter 7 will suggest. Joan called
this being "picky." At first, the class took nothing for granted, considering how they
would justify even the ability to add the same quantity to both sides of an equation
and maintain equality of the left and right sides. Joan said, for example, "I don’t

71
really want to be this picky but I’ll do it once" (920924.4). Over time, the class built
up a substantial body of facts, by proving them from the twelve original axioms
(Appendix 1); these could then be used in other proofs without further justification.
The basis of this organization of problems was the axioms. Joan said,
We’re going to take as our axioms just the things we need (only the things you
can’t prove). That’s the nice thing about mathematics, you don’t have to keep
proving things from first principles. Once you’ve proved it you can keep on
using it (920917.4).
Without giving too much weight to a seemingly off-the-cuff remark, I found this "nice
thing" quite interesting, for where else but in formalized systems like mathematics
would anyone be able to prove a result "from first principles" in the first place? To
rely on first principles is to treat deduction from the axioms as the reason our
theorems can be objectively verifiable, rather than to locate the source of objectivity in
a body of commonly accepted knowledge.
One of my objections to formalism rests upon the fact that for a typical
mathematical proposition, its proof from first principles is so complicated that it
obscures rather than clarifies the reason we find the proposition convincing (see Hanna
1983). Similarly, Livingston wrote that an informal proof of a theorem from
Euclidean geometry was more perspicuous than its translation into formal algebraic
terms.
To give a proof using the ‘precise’ definitions, either those definitions must first
be translated back into the observable details of proof-figures such as those we
used or the axiomatic geometer must use a proof-aceount such as the one we
gave, intentionally disengaged from the lived-work of its proof, to find such a

72
sophisticated reworking of its details. In general, such renderings o f proof-
accounts are unreadable as proof of the theorems whose proof-accounts they
render (Livingston 1987, 114).
I want to pose the question of how suitable an axiomatic approach is in a
constructivist class. At first glance, it certainly appears that an axiomatic approach is
compatible with the psychological roots o f constructivism, in that any type of
knowledge must be reconstructed and internalized by the learner. And it is true that in
Math 120, the axioms were first generated from the ground up by the class, who
decided what properties o f the number system they really needed; this fits a
constructivist educational model.
But as for the social constructivist philosophy o f mathematics per se, there
may be some tensions. On the one hand both constructivist and axiomatic approaches
acknowledge the fact that no one can prove the statements that the whole system
supposedly rests upon. On the other, Ernest (1991, 10-14) rejected formalism on
grounds including its absolutist view of mathematical truth. Reid (1991) reported that
according to one group of constructivist educators, "mathematics must have
meanings"; therefore, they found formalism an incompatible philosophy of
mathematics.
1 therefore suggest that the Math 120 classroom was characterized by a
tension between an overtly expressed constructivist philosophy of mathematics, which
was enacted through many organizational features, and a formalist philosophy of
mathematics, embodied in the practices of proving propositions from axiomatic first

principles.
1 have now situated the texts o f Part Two, relative to the class anil to my
theoretical apparatus. 1 now turn to my textual analyses.

PART TWO
READING

CHAPTER 4
A TEXTBOOK PROOF
There’s no time out from society.

Harold Garfinkel
Social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which mislead theory into
mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the
comprehension o f this practice.
Karl Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach''
In trying to see mathematics as social, I have found grappling with the
textbook probably the most difficult o f my case studies. In the others, I knew the
human beings behind the texts, I read writing by their own hands, saw them making
mistakes, heard them laughing. The textbook showed none of that.
As the material in this course was abstract, there were no ‘word problems’ in
the textbook, say about pay raises, missile trajectories, rates of capital flight from
developing countries, or gendered housework of using washing machines and electric
drills, (c.f. Dowling 1991; Frankenstein 1989; Maxwell 1985; McBride 1989; Shan
and Bailey 1991). Indeed there were not even any masculine pronouns in the chapter I
studied, so I could not study any overt sexism. The casual reader of the textbook
75

76
could be forgiven for thinking that it contained nothing but theorems and Greek
letters' and graphs o f mathematical functions defined without any reference to the
‘real world’.
The separation between the real world and textbook was apparently nearly
complete; despite having increased the presence of applications in this edition, the
boundaries remained sharp:
Notwithstanding the increased presence of applications, the book remains a text

on mathematics, not science or engineering. The subject is calculus and the
emphasis is on three basic ideas: limit, derivative, integral. All else is
secondary; all else can be omitted (Salas and Hille 1990, unpaginated preface).
In the book’s second chapter, the complete extent of concrete applications was, "What
is instantaneous velocity? It is the limit of average velocities” (Salas and Hille 1990,
47).
1 therefore saw little room to analyze the textbook in terms of political
interests. But as 1 said in the introduction, my concern here is with the practice of
mathematics: How people do the work of abstract mathematics, and how the products
o f that work come to appear to be independent of human consciousness.
Three related themes run through the analysis o f the specific mathematical
proofs in the four chapters of Part Two of this thesis. 1 attempt to undo the inversion
1 One might well inquire into the historical origins o f the use of Greek letters in
calculus, a subject which owes relatively little to Greek influence. This token o f homage
to classical Greece in any event belongs to a Eurocentric discourse on Greece as the true
source o f mathematics. Compare Cantor’s introduction o f the Hebrew aleph (K) into set
theory (Eglash 1992).

77
of process and product, recovering the actual practice which constitutes the objective
mathematical structures exhibited by these proofs. 1 read the proofs as languagc-
games, not only representing reality but accomplishing intentions. And 1 analyze the
effects of power, located and produced in the mathematical and educational discourses
to which these proofs belong.
This chapter, a case study of a textbook proof, has four aims: I) to analyze
how the power o f textbooks is constituted; 2) to ‘unpack’ the finished product in the
textbook, showing how it was ‘worked up’ in order to accomplish certain goals, that
is, to show jo w the objectivity o f the finished proof-account was produced through
the ‘Uved-work o f proving’; 3) to show the multiplicity of ways of reading the proof
that exist alongside the ‘factual’ or realist reading, in other words, to show the proof
as part of several language-games; and 4) to familiarize readers with the mathematical
concept of limit, which will recur throughout chapters 4-6.
In section 4.1 I discuss how the effects of power operate through mathematics
textbooks. In section 4.2, I show how one particular textbook introduces the concept
of limit, and I present my example, a proof of a proposition about a mathematical
limit. This example comes from Salas and Hille’s Calculus (6th ed., 1990), the
required textbook for Math 120. In figure 1 (page 85), I have added line numbeis to
the body of the proof, to aid a close analysis showing the dense web of relationships
among its ‘steps’. I place the proof in the context of the course’s social relations,
including the relationship between algebra and geometry.
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78
In section 4.3, 1 attempt to show the viability of an interpretive reading of the
graph, and to ‘unpack’ the taken-for-granted competencies which are needed to read
the graph. Section 4.4, the core of the chapter, presents multiple methods of reading
the algebraic body of the proof; I label these the factual, grammatical, linear and
procedural readings. Section 4.5 takes a polished and elegant proof-object,
characteristic: of other textbooks’ presentations of proof, and shows how much has
been left out of it.
1 must explain one writing convention I have adopted. As I attempted to turn
my g,. from abstract structures toward practical actions I encountered a problem: if
there is/was action to be described, when does/did it take place? Are/were meanings
create *hen the passage in question is read or when it was written? Throughout Part
Two, I have lin’d the past tense to describe how the texts were constructed, as a way
of disrupting the st o.iing timelessness or transcendence of the actions I analyze2.1
emphasize that the writers wrote; they are not still writing — in fact, one of the
textbook’s co-authors, Dr. Hille, is deceased. Similarly, my references to the research
literature avoid the subliming device of declaring in the present tense, for example,
"Marx writes. . ." The past tense restricts my claims.
4.1 Discursive power of the textbook
1 argue that the power of textbooks is located both internally in the way they
1 1 often use the present tense and even the future, however, to refer to what I
have written. This is itself a rhetorical strategy to carry my readers along.

79
have been written, and externally in the ways readers already know how to relate to
textbooks — not that these two can be completely separated.
In this section, I discuss two contrasting views of power, as they relate to
mathematical textbooks. In one view, power from above, the problems with textbooks
are located in their writing :n the second, Foucauldian view, power is seen as a
process, one which comes from below also, i.e., one in which students as well as
‘experts’ participate in producing.
McBride (1988) exemplified the first view of power from above —
ironically, as she was recommending that teachers consider Foucault’s analysis of
discursive practices. She located the authoritarian and rigid nature of textbooks
internally, in the way they were written3. The practices which she blamed for
"promoting a gender bias" in textbooks (among other aspects of mathematics
education) were completely the fault of the authors.
Concepts are presented within a language framework of rigid categories. Here

students are encouraged to think in dualistic ways that dichotomize context from
text (McBride 1988, 42).
She gave examples including images of mathematicians, historical anecdotes,
vocabulary choice. Textbook authors may write prose that is, for example, sexist,
racist, Eurocentric or classist. It may present an absolutist and elitist view of the
3 One example o f the absolutist nature of textbooks is that the answers to the odd-
numbered problems are often spelled out in the back o f the book. Knowledge has been
pre-packaged, ready to be absorbed by the compliant student.

80
nature of mathematics. The solution is for the teacher to find — or to write — better
textbooks.
This is indeed a worthwhile project, and McBride’s concerns are important;
however, she paid no attention to the expectations — authoritarian or subversive —
which students bring to their reading o f the books. Buerk accurately described the
common attitude that textbooks are an authority not to be questioned.
Many people 1 meet, in and out of my classroom, believe that mathematics is

made up only of rules, formulas and proofs to be memorized; skills to be
practiced; and methods to be followed precisely. They believe that mathematics
is a discipline where certainty is secure, where all questions have answers which
are known to authority (mathematician, professor. TA. textbook!: where
memorization, hard work, and some mystical quality called the mathematical
mind are required (Buerk 198S, 60, second emphasis added).
Here for example, the intention of textbook authors to be anti-sexist or anti-
authoritarian may be subverted by the expectations which teachers and students bring
to the text. New textbooks are not a complete solution; Even anti-sexist or anti
authoritarian curricular resources can be interpreted in a conservative way, as Dowling
(1990) documented.
In other ways, students may be excluded from knowledge by their textbooks.
One problem, related to a model of mathematics as representative rather than
performative, is that textbook proofs may fail to persuade the students. Buerk once
asked her students to analyze the justification for each line of a formal proof, to say
whether they believed each line, and finally to say whether they believed the proof as
a whole. Many accepted the individual steps but were still not convinced that the

81
proposition proved was true (personal communication, 1993 May 30; see also
Henderson 1981). Leron (1983, 1985) proposed an alternative method o f writing
proofs, which would accomplish the goal of explaining as well as proving.
I remember, as an undergraduate mathematics student, occasionally being
baffled by proofs, in which I could verify that each line did indeed follow from its
predecessors, but where the overall flow of the argument seemed to have been plucked
from thin air. How the author knew what step to take next was as inaccessible as the
possibility o f my producing a similar proof, other than by memorizing. Buerk found
that mathematics-as-product was accepted as a common image.
Even those of my colleagues and students who do acknowledge that

mathematicians create mathematics believe that the proofs that verily
mathematical statei 'ents come out o f the heads of mathematicians full-blown,
like Athena from the head of Zeus. They believe, too, that the succinct, formal
statements which clarify mathematical ideas represent the way the minds of
mathematicians work (Buerk 1985, 61-62).
Textbooks often encourage this view by presenting the finished product without
revealing the process that led to it; the proof in construction is hidden. Hence,
students may be left to simply imitate the finished product, since the meaningful
practice which generated the product is inaccessible to them. Reid (1993) called this
the phenomenon of "formulaic proofs."
I consider it important to make such rough work visible and accessible. The
next chapter will describe some of the "shop-work skills" in a situation where Joan
was attempting to make this tacit praxis available to her students.

82
Part of the power of the textbook depended not on its authors but on how the
professor used it. The course’s single required textbook, Salas and Hille (1990), was
used as a source of required readings and some of the problems for homework and
assignments4. That monological authority of the textbook5 was entirely typical of
mathematics courses; less than a quarter of the courses in the departmental calendar
listed supplementary references or more than one required textbook, whereas in
contrast most humanities or social science courses use more than one required
textbook.
At over 700 page., in length, the textbook was expected not leave out any
important facts; there was some consternation when the class discovered it did not
have a definition of the symbol [jc], the "greatest integer function," which was used in
the second assignment. Joan said, "It has really got to be in that book" (921006.8).
As I will show, the textbook used in Math 120 does not exactly fit M cBride’s
stereotype, in that, for example, the authors motivated their introduction of a formal
definition with ten pages of examples and intuitive exercises, and that their proofs
4 Joan used Salas and Hille partly as a strategic m ove to show that a con structivist
approach d id n o t require special resources, i.e., that professors could continue to use
their fam iliar books and switch over to an increasingly constructivist approach to
teaching. T h is illustrates another facet of pow er and resistance: that absolutist
textbooks can b e read in ways o f which their authors w ould not necessarily app rov e.
5 T h ere w ere also a few short hand-outs for reference, including a list of axio m s
fo r the real num ber system (appendix 1) T hat list was w ritten by the instructor fo r the
other section o f M ath 120 and edited by Joan Lewis, w ho rem oved rem arks sh e found
elitist, sexist or racist.

83
made explicit much more of the rough work than other books, which may have
omitted it in the interests of concision or elegance.
4.2 Introducing proofs about limits
Without an understanding of the mathematical concept of limit, which was
the central idea in Math 120, one cannot really appreciate the intentionality underlying
many of the statements produced by the various provers throughout Part Two. This
section discusses how the textbook writers introduced the concept and formal
definition of limit. The authors also demonstrated a heuristic for proving propositions
about limits using epsilon (e) and delta (5).
I will first very briefly put the notion of formal proof into some historical
perspective, with respect to a productive tension between algebra and geometry.
Derivatives and integrals were (for the most part successfully) calculated for some two
hundred years before the concepts were formalized (Grabiner 1983)6. Kitcher (1984)
argued that the formalization took place in the 19th century not because of a
philosophical or epistemological ‘impulse toward rigor*, but in response to particular
technical problems which had arisen and needed to be resolved.
Since the 19th century, algebra has been privileged over geometry as a way
of producing rigorous arguments in mathematics, particularly calculus (see Richards
6 In Gulliver’s Travels. Jonathan Swift satirized the use of infinitesimals, which were
sometimes zero and sometimes not zero, depending on the convenience of the
mathematician.

1988). Note that in Figure 1, for example, the only time the graph was mentioned
explicitly in the body of the proof was on line 2, when the proposition to be proved
was stated. The graph might help the students to see the geometrical interpretation of
limits, but it was not strictly necessary, in that a proof without a graph is perfectly
legitimate, and in fact a calculus proof that depends on its graph ' suspect. In chapter
5 , 1 will further develop the contrast over graphical issues.
Salas and Hille motivated the concept of limit by writing that for example
"the slope o f a curve" (i.e., the derivative) was the limit of the slopes of lines passing
through the point, and "the area of a region bounded by curves" (i.e., the integral)
was "the limit of area of regions bounded by line segments" (1990, 47).
As 1 will show, the formal definition o f a limit organizes the work that is
done by the prover. That is, provers work in such a way as to end up with the
conditions in the definition satisfied; despite the ‘mess’ that may be visible, provers do
not explore aimlessly and then write up the solution; their work throughout the
process is oriented toward the end goal (Livingston 1986). This will become clearer in
the course o f explaining Figure 1.

85
Figure 1. A Textbook P ro o f
i 2 ■ D E F IN IT IO N O F UMIT <3
Aj
F ig u re 2 2.10
I i'\a m p W ft
7 lim Jx * 2 (Figure 2 2.10)

«*•«
3 Finding a 6. I-CI < > 0 W e seek <5 > 0 such th at
4 if 0 < |* - 4 |< j , th e n |/ v - 2 |< t .
5 First we w ant a relation betw een |x - 4 |a n d |* G - 2 |. T o b e ab le to form V i al a ll we

(> need x 2 0. T o ensure this we m ust have <5 £ 4.
7 R em em b e rin g that we m ust h u t 6 s <t, le ts g o o n . I f * i 0 , th e n we c a n fo rm f i
8 and write
9 A - 4 M ' ' i ) f - 2 ; = <>A + 2 X / t - 2 ) .
10 'I a im ) 1 absolute values, wc have
|| h - 4 | = |vfi •» 2|i*r» - 2j
|j S in c e \Jx v 2| > I , we have
13 |/ x - 2 |< |j t - 4 |.
|4 Tills last Inequality suggesti that we sim ply sei <5 = e. Bui re m e m b e r n o w th e p rc-
15 viou 5 req u irem en t S <, 4 W e can m eet all req u irem en ts b y s e ttin g 3 ■= m in im u m o f
10 4ande
17 Showing lliat the & "w o rk ." Let < > 0. C hoose <5 = m in ( 4 , <) a n d assu m e th a t
18 0 0 and ca n w rite
20 I*- <1«|/ I + 2| Ji - 2|.

2 1 Since |vG a 2 |> I , we can conclude th at
22 |>/x - 2 | < | x — 4 |.
23 Since 1* - 4 | < <i a n d 3 £ t , it does follow th at
24 |'/ x - 2 |< « . O
Salas, S.L. and Einar Hiile. Calculus

Copyright * 1990 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Reprinted by permission o f John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An intuitive definition is no less important than the formal one, especially for
the mathematically less sophisticated reader. Salas and Hille introduced the concept of
limit informally at first:
A rough translation of
Hmcf(x)= l (the limit off(x) as x tends to c is I)
might read
as x approaches c, f(x) approaches I
or, equivalently,
fo r x close to c hut different from c, f(x) is close to I
(Salas and Hille 1990, 48).
After presenting a dozen examples and a set of fifty exercises for the textbook reader
to "decide on intuitive grounds" whether indicated limits existed, Salas and Hille
formalized the above condition as follows:7
| f(x )-l | can be made arbitrarily small

simply by requiring that
| x -c | be sufficiently small but different from zero.
Putting the various pieces together in compact form we have the following
fundamental definition.
DEFINITION 2.2.1 THE LIMIT OF A FUNCTION

L et/ be a function defined at least on some set of the form (c-p,c) u ( c ,d p).
jl% A x) ~ l iff f°r each e > 0 there exists 6 > 0 such that
if 0 < | j t - o | < 6 , then | ./(* )-/1 < e
(Salas and Hille 1990, 57).
7 In an earlier edition of the book, Salas and Hille wrote, "In Section 2.1 we tried
to convey the idea of limit in an intuitive manner. Our remarks, however, were too
vague to be calkd mathematics. In this section we shall be more precise" (1978, 45,
emphasis added). As I will suggest in the final chapter, the production of boundaries
around mathematics, defined for example by vagueness versus precision, is an aspect
of mathematical discourse which deserves fiuther investigation.

87
Salas and Hille then presented a common heuristic for using the e,S definition
to prove propositions about limits.
Usually e,6 arguments are carried out in two stages. First we do a little
algebraic scratchwork, labeled "finding a 6" in some o f the examples above.
This scratchwork involves working backward from | f(x )-i | < e to find a 6 > 0
sufficiently small so that we can begin with the inequality 0 < | x -c | < 5 to
arrive at | f(x)-l | < e. This first stage is just preliminary, but it shows us how
to proceed in the second stage. The second stage consists of showing that the 6
"works" by verifying that for our choice o f 8 the implication
if 0 < | j c - c | < 5, then \f( x )- l\ < e
is true. The next two examples are more complicated and therefore may give
you a better feeling for this idea of working backward to find a 5 (Salas and
Hille 1990, 62).
This heuristic is faithful to the work provers actually perform, in that the formal
demonstration that 8 ‘works’ is impossible until the preliminary work has been done.
But 1 will show that in Figure 1, even the ‘informal’ stage contains a lot of embodied
work that can be sensed if one asks, "How did they know to do it that way?"
4.3 The craft of the graph
1 will begin the detailed analysis of the proof-object by analyzing the graph
which accompanies the text (see figure 1), for in the case of an actual graph, the
‘picture’ model of communication is naturally enticing. I hope to show that other ways
of looking at the graph are more productive than the picture model; in particular, in a
representational model of communication, accuracy o f the graph and the clarity o f its
correspondence with some mathematical object are dominant concerns, and the needs
for generality and dynamism in the proof, which are important for making the proof

88
convincing, are simply not relevant to the model.
1 argue it is better to consider the graph as having been crafted with the
communicative goal of teaching the students how to use the definition of limits. The
different models of communication embody different treatment of issues of
generality/specificity, static/dynamic orientation, accuracy and "shop-work" skills.
1) Generality/specificity. A proof may be seen to be flawed if the
demonstrable properties o f the structures it displays fail to be as general as the claim
that is made, and instead appear to depend on special characteristics of the exemplar
which happens to have been chosen. For example, if a theorem is supposed to hold
for all triangles, but the proof is demonstrated using an equilateral triangle, the reader
may suspect that the proof relies on some properties peculiar to the narrower class,
equilateral triangles. Though the graph in figure 1 was intended as an illustration
rather than as a proof in itself, one could still criticize its lack of generality, in that
the function appears to have the value exactly 2-e when x is 4-6, whereas all that is
required is that the function value be somewhere between 2-e and 2 + e inclusive.
2) Static/dynamic orientation. The static nature of the diagram may pose a
difficulty for the inexperienced reader. As 1 will show in Chapter 5, the interpretation
of graphs on the blackboard is facilitated by the ordering in which the prover draws
the pieces of the graph. Similarly, temporal clues can be found when a computer-
based instruction package draws a graph piece by piece. But the readers of the
textbook see the graph all at once, and must do their own work to figure out how

89
everything fits together.
In particular, it is hard to see the dynamic relationship between the two
shaded bands, labelled 2 ± e and 4 + 6 . According to the definition of limit, the value
of e must actually be chosen first, and a 6 is then found that would be suitable for
that e. The relationship o f ordered dependence is not depicted by the way the two
bands were drawn in the graph in the textbook; the bands were visually not
distinguished and therefore seeing this relationship in the graph requires work by the
textbook’s reader.
In fact, several teachers I asked questioned the textbook’s inclusion of the
graph at all. They said it would be preferable to ask the students to draw the graph
themselves, thus incorporating the temporal element in the graph.
3) Accuracy. The curve was not drawn ‘accurately’ with respect to an ideal,
but 1 argue that it did not need to be. Though it is obvious to a trained mathematician
that the curve is in fact not ‘really’ the parabola it was supposed to be (for example,
because the slope wasn’t steep enough near x= 4 and especially further to the right,
and because the curve too closely resembled a straight line near the x-value of 4-6)
the drawing was adequate for the purposes at hand, to clarify the e,6 concept o f limit.
In the graph, the particular choice of 6 illustrated was not the same as the
choice of 6 which was made in the body o f the proof, 6 = e . Instead 6 appeared to be
about 3c, which if one did the algebra would not actually satisfy the required
condition on line 4. But for the purposes at hand, it may be that the exaggerated 6 was

90
chosen for visual contrast with the book’s three previous graphs (not shown here), in
which 6 was exactly equal to e; generality in the illustrations could have been needed
to clear up potential misconceptions about how e and 6 must be related. It is not
crucial, I suggest, that the visual values o f e and 5 correspond to algebraically correct
values.
4) Shop-work skills. There are practical competencies involved in knowing
what was essential about the graph and what could be altered, as one can realize from
the thought experiment of asking someone who knows no calculus to copy the graph
by hand. The scribe might copy it very precisely and accurately, or, not knowing
what was significant, they might make errors, say by making 5 a bit bigger, so that
visually / 4 - & fell below the band marked 2 + c . Fear of inadvertently altering an
essential part of the solution might be one reason why students’ solutions are
sometimes very meticulously written.
One example of a change which would be safe for the scribe to make, is that
the entire graph could be enlarged or reduced (as by a photocopier) without altering its
meaning. It could also be compressed or stretched either horizontally or vertically1;
The main properties o f the graph which needed to be preserved by the productive
work of copying the graph ‘properly’ would be the ‘topological’ properties, such as
points’ remaining inside or outside a region.
1 If, however, the topic were the derivative (i.e., slope) of the curve, rather than
limits, stretching the graph vertically could be confusing to the readers.

91
According to the picture model, all that really matters is accuracy and clarity.
By seeing the graph instead as a communicative act, a reader can unpack the practical
competencies of ‘doing graphing’ which constituted the objectivity of the graph, and
can start to analyze how well the graph accomplishes its pedagogical goals.
4.4 Multiple readings
This section introduces and analyzes several readings of the proof in addition
to the ‘natural’ factual reading. In this section, my analysis rests upon features I saw
which are in the book, available to all, perhaps in a taken-for-granted way.
4.4.1 Factual readings
1 introduced the factual method o f reading in chapter 2. In the crudest version
of the factual reading method, the text is taken to represent or refer to a reality ‘out
there’. The conventionality of the symbols is transparent and invisible. The meaning
may be taken to reside in the equations and other non-verbal symbols; the words are
merely connective. Here the essence of the proof is a set of structural relationships
‘expressed’ symbolically, e.g., | *-4 | = | / x + 2 | | V x-2 | . The text depicts facts
about, for example, epsilons and deltas and the square root of x.
Evaluating the text is not part of this type o f factual reading; the text simply
conveys a meaning. The possibility of evaluation requires stepping outside the world
of square roots and epsilons created by the text, and seeing the text as text. 1 therefore
turn next to a grader's version of a factual reading.

92
In this reading posture, which may be adopted by mathematicians when they
teach or publish, the reader steps back from the text far enough to see that the text is
not identical to the essence it ‘represents’ or ‘conveys’. Texts are judged for the
clarity with which they express the ‘underlying’ idea — and for the absence of any
errors, since any contradiction would throw the entire proof into doubt.
4.4.2 A grammatical reading
Another way of reading the text attends to its grammatical structure, as one
might do in an English composition class.
First, who was meant to be included in the "we" of the proof? The
conversational invitation, "let’s go on" (line 7), included the reader among "us"; thus
"we" were not solely the textbook authors, Salas and Hille. The rhetorical move to
include the reader is illusory, however, as the reader has little choice about whether to
decline this invitation to go on (see Pimm 1987). In contrast, when a professor
suggests, "Let’s go on," students can, for example, convince them to do a review
instead.
Similarly, the authors unilaterally declared, "Ws want a relation between
| x-4 | and | /3 f-2 | " (line 5, emphasis added). The response of a reader who is
resistant to being led in such directions might be to ‘talk back’ to the writer, saying,
"Oh ms do, do we? I think that’s what you want."
Second, the verbs in the passage were all written in the present tense. For

93
example, "we seek 8>0" (line 3), "we have a>0" (line 19). In a way, this collapsed a
sequence of completed actions into a ‘literary present’ in which everything seems to
be happening now.
Imperatives were used in the following cases: "let epsilon be greater than
;:cro" (line 3 and line 17), "remember" (line 14), "choose delta" (line 17), and
"assume" (line 17). An alternative formulation might be, "the reader should
remember," though I don’t necessarily find this better. This grammatical form again
draws the reader into a situation dictated by the authors; i.e., it means, "epsilon ]s
greater than zero — not because I have proven so, but because I have declared it so."
The object of the verb "have" in lines 6, 7, 10, 12, and 19 is in each case an
assertion, for example, "we have .*>0" (line 19). This is a way of turning the fact
"a>0" into a thing which can be manipulated and possessed.
Winsor (personal communication) suggested an explanation for the modal
constructions: in lines 7, 15, 19 and 21, people "can," but in lines 6 and 7,
mathematical facts "must."
The authors created a separation between the pedagogical object and the
mathematical object, by setting the question "Why?" (line 6) in a small typeface —
which was not used elsewhere in the example — and parenthesizing it, This question
drew attention to a minor point in the argument; why was the ‘picky’ requirement that
8^4 singled out for attention? Was this what really mattered in the proof?
My point here has been to disrupt the transparency of the text, to oppose

94
Tufte’s previously cited directive to "induce the viewer to think about the substance
rather than about the methodology" (1983, 13). In this way, I have revealed an aspect
of the process of proving, namely the choices of rhetorical tools.
4.4.3 A linear reading
The body of the proof was visually organized in a linear fashion, as a single
wide column o f text. One could read the lines from top to bottom, and within each
line from left to right. The problem is that this order of reading docs not match the
way one would actually prove the proposition, as 1 will show in the next chapter.
Teachers such as Buerk (1985) have criticized a stereotype of mathematics as
a step-by-step, algorithmic activity. Mathematics is surely like this at times, but most
problem-solving requires skills that are far less linear than the stereotype says.
Yet it is not unusual for students to read mathematical textbooks in a linear
fashion without any of the referring back and forth which is demanded by an
understanding of the meaning. One professor, Joel Hillel, told me how he had looked
on in alarm as students on the bus blithely went through their mathematics textbooks
with highlighters, marking line by line by line, without any pause for reflection. A
linear reading strategy like this serves understanding poorly except in the simplest of
cases. Hillel’s anecdote points to the need for further investigation of students’ reading
styles.
4.4.4 A procedural reading

95
In this section, I perform yet another reading, one which attends to the
directed and intentional character of the proof-account. I show the complex temporal
organization o f the work which the finished object embodied.5
In thinking about the how the pieces of a proof fit together, I suggest that the
metaphor of ‘steps' could be misleading if taken as the steps o f a staircase, one after
another in a linear progression. Steps of a dance might be a more fitting image than
the staircase, but to emphasize the intentional, goal-oriented character o f mathematical
work, I will refer to ‘moves’ of a proof, like moves in a game of chess.
In Figure 1, there was a fairly complex sequence of moves, which followed
an order, but not in a straight line. One of the branches in the path was followed first,
and then the provers jumped back to the beginning of the other branch and traced
along it.
I will now describe the proof-account, line-by-line.
The authors began by stating what was to be proved (line 2 of figure 1),
x5 4 v< F = 2
Salas and Hille organized the subsequent material around the definition of
limit and their heuristic above, "finding a 5," and "showing that the 5 ‘works.’"
Lines 3 and 4 were a statement of line 2 in terms of the definition. Note that
e was chosen arbitrarily, so that a little later, they would be able to claim "for all
5 1 hasten to reassure the mathematically inexperienced reader that no other section

of the thesis will be remotely as technically dense as this one.

e > 0 . . . " a certain statement was satisfied.
In line 5 they set out a dependent goal, finding a relation between | x-4 \
and | J x - 2 | . Then there was a branch in the path, because they needed to make
sure their function was well-defined at the particular value o f* ,
While this was the ‘informal’ part of the proof, it still did not represent the
steps as they would be performed by a prover first confronting the problem; ensuring
that such details are provided for would typically be left to a tidying-up stage at the
end, i.e., the creative work of problem-solving must precede its own rigorization. In
chapter 5, 1 will show that the rough work followed a different order when it was
actually developed on the board, and this minor point about making sure Vx was well-
defined was indeed left until the very end.
In order to produce a rigorous argument, the authors set a condition on 6,
which was needed to ensure that S x was defined. They made a point of the
backgrounding and later foregrounding o f this condition: "Remembering that we must
have 6 < 4 , let’s go on" (line 7), and "But remember now the previous requirement
S < 4" (lines 14-15). This was essential work in order for the exhibited object to How
smoothly, that is, for every step to follow obviously from the preceding ones,
Temporal connectives like these are a vital part of a proof-account. Along
with "all the ‘thus’s,’ ‘hence’s, ‘since’s’ and ‘therefore’s’ that point to orderlinesses of
work practice" (Livingston 1987, 103), they enable the reader to follow the lived-
work that is described in the proof-account.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n p rohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

97
A proof-account’s more obvious formulations of its required organizational work

— like ‘first’ or ‘then,’ ‘hence’ or ‘QED’ — articulate and describe the lived-
work of the actual proof (Livingston 1987, 104-105).
Otherwise, if they are omitted, the readers of the textbook may ask themselves, "Wait
a minute. Where did thal come from?" When that happens, students may call into
question the adequacy or rigor o f the proof. As Livingston put it,
If a prover does enough things incorrectly — if his writings are not paced with
his talk, if he organizes his material presentation improperly — then the
naturally analyzable mathematical object will not be exhibited. And that this is
so points to the fact that provers work in such a way that this will not be the
case (Livingston 1986, 10).
As I will show in Chapter 6, the use of temporal connectives was one area in which
most students were noticeably less fluent than experienced mathematical writers.
The authors’ primary goal (A) was set out in lines 3 and 4: "we seek 6 > 0
such that. . . . " A dependent goal (B) was set out in line 5: "we want a relation. . ."
And in order to make this relation proper, they wrote, "we need XetO" (C) (line 5-6).
Finally, they wrote, "To ensure this we must have 6 < 4 " (D) (line 6). So far there
was a fairly clear chain of intentional steps. Then they jumped back to level (C), once
they had flagged level (D) — as something they would eventually return to — by
saying, "Remembering that we must have 5 s 4 , let’s go on" (line 7). They deduced
that under the given conditions f x was a valid expression (line 7) and proceeded to
address goal (B).
Line 9 expressed a relation between x—4 and ( /x - 2 ) , This was not yet quite
what they had wanted in line 5, because either of the terms might be negative. Hence

98
they took absolute values (line 10) and obtained | jc—4 | = | v T + 2 | | y/7-2 | (line
1 1 ).
The definition of limit as instantiated in lines 2 and 3 required that if
| x-4 | were small then | \fx -2 | would also be small. That could be satisfied by
showing that [ J x + 2 \ was no smaller than some quantity, i.e., a ‘lower bound’;
this would imply that | x-4 | / | V x +2 | was no larger than some other quantity,
because dividing | x-4 | by a large number would produce a small number.
The lower bound they chose was 1, i.e., they guaranteed | / x +2 | >1
This had the virtue of simplicity when they got to calculations later on.10
Using the lower bound of 1, they deduced | / x - 2 | < | x-4 | (line 13).
Then they jumped back to goal (D) and recalled that 5 < 4 (lines 14-15).
Practical work was involved in "setting 8 = minimum of 4 and e" (lines 15-
16). The authors had established above that 8 = e would "work," but they did not
actually spell out that the more general condition was 8 ^ b rather than 8 ^ c .
Checking which way the inequality went was thus an example of the lived-work of
proving, an act of seeing that the proof account did in fact prove what it had set oul to
prove. The objectivity o f the condition 8 ^ e was produced through work done by the
10They could also have used a lower bound of 2, i.e., | f x +2 | ^2 . They could
then have concluded:
| '/x —2 | — | x-4 | / j <fx +2 | is | x-4 \ 12
so if 8 -2 e and | x-4 | <8 then | V7-2 | <8/2 - c. This would have been more
complicated than what they actually did. There is another skill involved here: checking
so as to avoid dividing by zero.

99
provers — by which I mean not only the writers o f the proof but also the readers who
verify its correctness. Having done that, they then found it ‘obvious’. That is, an ‘out
there’ fact was made available as a result of justifying practice.
4.5 The polished proof
The final section (lines 17-24) was the culmination of much preparatory
work. It is all that would appear in many textbooks. Here was a polished
demonstration that the definition of limit was satisfied. There was a great deal o f work
that was left out of this proof-object, however. Once the work in lines 3-16 had been
done, the section from lines 17-24 was able to stand alone. There were no explicit
references in lines 17-24 to lines 1-16 nor to the graph; the circumstance of the
polished p ro o fs production was no longer needed. The proof account’s "disengaged
adequacy" was established.
The definition of limit (as made specific to the function in line 4) was not
cited directly, but this work was clearly organized around it. The provers oriented
their work toward the satisfaction of its conditions.
They showed for all e > 0 there was a 6 > 0 such that the implication in line 4
was satisfied, i.e.,
if 0 < | *-4 | < 6, then | / x - 2 | < e.
They chose an e without preconditions other than that e > 0 (line 17), and
assigned a 6 (line 17) according to the formula which they summarized at lines 15-16,

100
having just derived it at some length.
In line 18, they assumed the first part of line 4, 0 < | x-4 | < 6; if they
could then demonstrate the second part, | vGc-2 ( < e , the implication in line 4
would be proven, as would the proposition in line 2.
Now, 8 < 4 (line 19) followed from 5=min{4,e} (line 17), but also from the
work done in lines 5 and 6. Next, * > 0 (line 19) followed from 8 < 4 (19 and 6-7) and
| x-4 | < 5 (line 18). Therefore f x existed, so line 20 followed by factoring; it was
an exact replica of line 11. The intermediary work of lines 7-10 was omitted here.
Line 21 followed from the facts that S x was non-negative and 2 > 1. Line 22 followed
from lines 20 and 21. Line 23 followed from line 17 and 18, so they wrote, "it does
follow" from line 22 that, as they had expected, | J x - 2 | < e (line 24).
4.6 Conclusion
In this chapter I have presented a way o f seeing the textbook proof as an
intentional communicative text. By emphasizing the work that the authors have done,
particularly in tying the pieces together with temporal and logical connectives, and by
illustrating multiple readings o f the text, I have criticized the factual reading of the
proof as a ‘natural’ object.
1 have taken what was at first glance a purely technical piece of text
reflecting only a set of abstract relations between mathematical entities — and k i d
fact a purely technical piece of mathematical text — and shown that its meaning is

101
multilayered. One need not read the proof for what it says about mathematical
actualities ‘out there’, and in fact to read using the factual method requires many
taken-for-granted competencies — which may need to be made explicit if they are not
to be a barrier to learners’ understanding.
The proof is the object of several language-games. It can be read in different
ways by different readers. It requires the skills o f writer and reader to make the proof
recognizable as the thing that it is. Textual work by the authors draws the readers,
more or less successfully, into the scene.
The objectivity, the disengaged adequacy, of Salas and Hille’s proof can now
be seen as the practical accomplishment of its provers.

CHAPTER 5
BOARD-WORK: PROOF IN CONSTRUCTION
Existence precedes essence.

Jean-Paul Sartre
We make the path by walking.

Salvadoran proverb
The ‘rough work’ of developing a proof is the concern of the following case
study. One lesson in Math 120 was devoted to developing a formal proof on the
chalk-board, from the declaration of the problem through all the rough work to the
finished product. The professor, Joan Lewis, called this a "proof in construction."
The proof in construction on the board and the textbook proof do have much
in common. This correspondence between pieces of the two proofs makes the picture
model of mathematics plausible, so it is tempting to abstract an essence, of which the
two proofs are then held to be (imperfect) reflections. The existence of this essence is
not the sort o f thing that can be refuted, any more than the existence of God can be
refuted; however, following Wittgenstein (1967; 1978), 1 ask what may be gained by
positing this essence? And what may be lost?
Thus in this chapter, I continue my effort to locate the objectivity of
mathematics in actual practice rather than in a transcendental essence. My point here
102

103
is that 1 find little illumination through the assumption of an ideal essence to which
both the board-work proof and the textbook proof might correspond. The distinctive
orderliness I demonstrate in the proof in construction suggests that practice can stand
as its own explanation and justification, without need o f an abstract foundation.
Except in a quite general and superficial sense, belief in an ideal proof can offer little
guidance to an actual prover.
The chapter will be organized as follows. In section 5 . 2 , 1 will describe the
set-up o f the lesson, relating this to Joan’s pedagogical goals, and explaining the
proposition that was proven on the board.
Figure 2, "A proof in construction" is a selective ’time-lapse portrait’ of the
entire chalk-board, which will introduce the comparison, in section 5.3, between the
in-class proof and the previous chapter’s textbook proof. I will try to explain what
made both texts recognizable as epsilon-delta proofs o f propositions about limits, but I
will also point out important differences, which generally weigh against the usefulness
of trying to establish a one-to-one correspondence between the proofs. The spatial and
temporal organization of the board-work was dynamic, containing erasures and
insertions. Additional objectives were visible in the board-work, such as graphical
illustration of the concept o f limit; therefore, a number of elements of the proof in
construction were simply not present in the textbook proof. As chapter 4 indicated,
some parts of the textbook proof reversed the order in which rough work would be
done. In particular, the detailed work o f making the board-work proof rigorous

104
occurred at the end o f the process. The style o f writing the proof on the board did not
spell out its internal connections as explicitly nor as densely as did the textbook proof.
1 have been criticizing the notion that the textbook proof was somehow an
expression o f transcendental mathematical principles or essences. In section 5.4, 1 will
go a bit further, to say that all of the images before the reader are mediations of the
world they ostensibly depict. To support this claim, 1 will describe the method of
construction of the figures in this chapter, and problematize any reading of them as
simple reflections of what Joan wrote on the board. This is not to discredit the
figures, but to recover their status as constructed — and therefore interrogable —
objects. Along the way, 1 observe some points about interpretation and the work that
goes into proving. For example, successful interpretation of slips of the pen shows
there is more to the meaning o f mathematical texts that the denotations o f their
constituent symbols.
In sum, the process of proving is tremendously rich and complex. Any
perspective which reduces that process to a set of abstract relations is pedagogically
problematic. I hope that by the end of the chapter, any notion that the act of proving
is somehow determined, say by the mathematical validity of what is to be proven, will
be untenable. Thus I will argue for the primacy of actual practice over the abstracted
essences which are sometimes said to be ‘reflected’ in a proof.

105
5.1 Set-up of the lesson
The lesson on the proof in construction took place around the end of the first
month of classes, shortly after the epsilon-delta definition o f limits had been
introduced. That day, as usual, oan stood at the front of the class and wrote at the
chalk-board. She began by stating the proposition to be proven, Jim^ vO r+T= 2 , and
together she and the students worked out a proof. The work of developing shared
knowledge in the classroom consisted of talking, gesturing, students’ note-taking and
Joan’s writing at the board; the latter will be the focus here.
As in chapter 4, 1 argue that the mathematical text under study, in this case
the proof in construction, was not simply a representation o f an ideal abstract proof;
the board-work was indeed designed to prove a proposition, but also to make a
philosophical point about the nature of mathematics, to organize a lesson, and to help
students to develop a graphical sense of mathematical limits.
Joan’s teaching technique exemplified the constructivist attempt to demystify
mathematics by showing the process by which results are produced. As frame 1 of
figure 2 (page 107) shows, the relationship between the "proof in construction" and
the "polished, publishable proof" was presented explicitly to the students as a key idea
of the lesson. As I pointed out in section 4.1, too many mathematics courses expose
students only to finished proofs, which may give the students little idea of how the
products were produced and of how to do similar work.
The proposition jiihj v T T T = 2 was not in itself a particularly interesting or

106
important result — in fact, slightly later in the course, once the class had acquired
access to a few simple theorems about limits, the proposition became quite trivial to
prove, as follows:
1^*23V'jE'+T = v/Hnj x+T = V( ^h j x ) T T = %/J+T =2.
5.2 Comparison with the textbook proof
In the previous chapter, I discussed the textbook’s proof of the proposition
Hm, / x - 2. This chapter is about a proof of a similar proposition, hm^ v /J T T --2,
which came from an exercise in the textbook. This similarity will make the differences
in the two pieces of mathematical work all the more striking.
Figure 2 illustrates a sequence of moves in the proof in construction that
appeared on the board. In this figure, 1 use the term ‘frame’ to evoke the introductory
chapter’s photographic model of these images as themselves constructed (see section
5.4). For this figure, I chose these 8 frames from a sequence of 57 frames, to
illustrate some of the continuities and discontinuities in the lived-work of proving.
Frame 1 shpws the original left, centre and right panels of the board, while frame 8
shows the board as it stood at the end of the lesson.

107
Figme 2. A Proof in Construction. Frame 2.

108
Figure 2. A Proof in Construction. Frame 4.

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Figure 2- A Proof in Construction. Fram e 5.
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ps?7*r~
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Figure 2. A Proof in Construction. Fram e 6.
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Figure 2 . A Proof in Construction. Fram e 8.

o
Ill
1 wish in figure 2 to emphasize a sense of the visual dynamism of the board-
work proof in construction. Nothing in the left panel of frame 1 remained by the time
of frame 4; in the centre panel, frames 1, 4 and 7 have no overlap; and the right
panel underwent three complete erasures.
Both Figures 1 and 2 are recognizable as epsilon-delta proofs. Just what
makes them so, what makes them "seeable" and "discussable" (Livingston 1986,
1987) as the proper proofs they really are, could in itself be the topic of a thesis,
though this would take me much further into ethnomethodology than 1 have need for
here. Suffice it to say that I see the "just-thisness" (Lynch 1992) of the proofs as
consisting neither in the way their constituent symbols happen to have been
concatenated, nor in someone’s personal belief that these were proper proofs.
Criticizing a narrowly formalist approach to mathematical education for
failing to produce genuine understanding among students, Reid (1993) noted the
possibility that a proof may be formally correct while having been produced simply by
formal manipulation o f empty symbols; he called this a "formulaic proof."
Wittgenstein criticized as well the Intuitionist notion that the mental sensation of
feeling, "Now 1 understand," or "That’s easy!" (Wittgenstein 1967, §151) could be
sufficient either. For him, calculating correctly was calculating tike this (1978). That
is, the criterion was consistency with a repeated pattern o f overt action. Proving
correctly then was proving like this. Though a correct proof has a "family
resemblance" (Wittgenstein PI, §§67-77) to other proofs, Wittgenstein said there is no

112
need to base this in some underlying essence.
The two proofs do both exhibit a rule or formula for generating a value of
delta, given any positive value of epsilon. That formula for delta is not, however, the
whole of what makes these proofs what they are; as 1 will show in chapter 6, some
students focused on the formula to the exclusion of an important element, namely that
they had to exhibit that a particular logical implication was satisfied.
Despite the two proofs’ resemblance, there are both minor and major
differences between them, and I will use these differences to challenge the notion of a
single ideal proof to which both concrete examples are isomorphic. To ; a it in
algebraic terms, if figure 1 were isomorphic to the ideal proof, and likewise figure 2
were isomorphic to the ideal proof, then figures 1 and 2 would have to be isomorphic
to each other. It is of course conceivable that the ideal proof corresponds only to the
finished product in the textbook, but then 1 would be even more doubtful of the
ideal’s relevance to the process which mathematical apprentices need to learn.
One minor difference is that whereas figure 1 used the reasoning
| vOr+2 | >1 tp derive the condition 5 ^ e (lines 12-14), figure 2 used
| S x + 2 | ^ 2 to derive the condition 5 < 2 e (see frame 8). There were in fact
infinitely many possible values which could have been used as the lower bound instead
of the constants 1 or 2. Almost all such values would have been less convenient to
work with than 1 or 2, and by making the proof less perspicuous, the alternative
values would also have made it less persuasive; for example, | yjc 4-2 | >: 1.67584216

llJ
works correctly, but not well. What then should the constant be in the ideal proof?
The advantage of 1 is that it would keep the algebra simple, while 2 is the largest of
the valid constants, and thus would have a certain informativeness and elegance. There
is no single best answer; multiplicity undermines the hold of the ideal on our
imaginations.
A more important difference between figures 1 and 2 is that in the former,
the graph seemed almost an afterthought, while in the latter, idiographic text and
graphs were dynamic and closely coordinated. Unlike the static picture in figure 1,
here the graph was built up stage by stage. An arbitrary positive e was chosen and a 8
found that would work for that e. Frame 2 o f figure 2 shows that the horizontal band
between 2 -e and 2 + e was drawn before the delta band seen in frame 3.
As well, there was room on the board to show two different values of e, and
how a smaller value of 8 was required to work with the smaller second value of e.
Third, a contrast structure in frame 3 showed that if x were not between 3-8
and 3 + 8 , / x + T could not be guaranteed to be between 2 -e and 2 + e . This
clarification of the logical implication was the purpose of the dotted vertical and
horizontal lines there.
A final sign of the graphical orientation o f figure 2 came from comparing the
uses of two statements which were exactly equivalent semantically: (A)
| v^jt+T-2 | < e and (B) 2 -e < v T + T < 2 - e . Statement (A) occurred in both
figures. In figure 1, statement (A) appeared in lines 4 and 24 — o f course with '/x

114
substituting for v 'x + T , as the mathematical proposition was different. The expanded
statement (B) appeared nowhere in figure 1, because the textbook proof was oriented
toward an algebraic demonstration. As line 24 shows, evaluating the expression
relative to e was the final goal of the proof; hence conversion to statement (B) would
only have been a distraction. In the proof in construction, by contrast, statement (B)
was more suitable for tying the algebraic expressions to the graph in the right panel.
The value of the function, /j c + T , lay between 2 - e and 2 + e , or graphically
speaking, a certain part of the parabolic curve lay inside the shaded horizontal band.
Figure 2 shows the order in which moves of a proof were actually performed
by a group of provers. For example, in frame 5 of figure 2, knowing only that
| / x + T - 2 | had to be shown to be less than e, the provers asked how they could
get rid of the square root, and that experiment led to the technique of ‘conjugating the
T T +2
radical’, i.e., ‘multiplying by 1’ in the form of • Reorganizing and
condensing this process produced a ‘trick’ that is seen in lines 9-11 of figure 1, where
x-4 was expressed as the difference of squares, i.e., ^ F ~ 2 J, which equalled
(V 7 + 2 )(/F -2 ). This was elegant but also mystifying. For a reader to ask, "How did
they know to do that?" is a sign that the text embeds accumulated work.
A similar reorganization took place in the presentation of the condition 6 < 4 .
This concern appeared early in figure 1, at line 4, whereas on the board it was left
until the very end, as its relevance to the main point of the proof was small. In the
sequence o f 57 frames, this rigorizing move appeared in the second-last frame.

115
W hat was written on the board was a residue o f activity which included
w riting symbols, talking and gesturing; the w ritten traces do not necessarily provide a
good model for w riting an assignm ent solution, in that, the text o n the board was
alm ost w holly idiographic, having few er English w ords than the textbook. F or
exam ple, the sole occurrence o f "we" was in fram e 4 o f figure 2. Connective w ords
like "since" and "because" were used only at the very end, in the "polished
publishable proof"; all the occurrences o f these w ords are shown in fram e 8. If
students w ere to take notes only on the w ritten material they would be left with a
stripped-dow n image o f proof. In traditional lecture classes, w here a prepared p ro o f is
copied from the professor’s book o r notes to the board and from there to the students’
notes, proofs do — despite their other flaw s — at least contain som e w ords to tie the
pieces together. Since w riting may be privileged in com parison w ith its coordinated
practices o f talking and gesturing, attention may need to be given to how students take
notes on such im prom ptu lessons as the p ro o f in construction. O therw ise they may
tend tow ard em ulating nearly wordless proofs.
5 .3 C onstructing and interpreting th e figure
Despite the fact that the figure 1 present in this chapter is less ‘w orked-up’
than the textbook proof in chapter 4 ,1 do not wish to leave th e im pression that these
fram es are simply representations o f th e w riting on the board. 1 point out th at even
here there is mediation — not at all to discredit my figures, but to encourage a m ore

116
complex reading of them than the factual-realist reading. I will therefore document the
process by which 1 have made these images available.1
Anyone taking notes on the board-work would face the challenge that it
changed dynamically, and fairly rapidly. I chose to concentrate on what was being
written on the board, rather than have a partial record of talk, gesture and writing.
1 wanted to capture a sense of the fluid development of the board, and in
particular, 1 was interested in the erasures and insertions that interrupted a linear
accumulation of text and images on the board. Since I felt at the time of the lesson
that a video camera would be too intrusive, the technique my supervisor and 1
conceived to accomplish this was to use a sequence of transparent overlays. The image
composed by their juxtaposition would show the state of the board at any moment,
and could be decomposed to reveal the sequence of markings and erasures which led
to that state.
1 prepared a binder to hold the sheets in place so that marks on one could be
aligned accurately in relation to the text previously recorded. 1 switched pen colors
whenever the writing deviated from the normal left-to-right, top-to-bottom sequence
characteristic o f verbal text. (Clearly, this rule which 1 had designed for text required
some ad hoc interpretation when I tried to apply it to the sequencing of marks in the
1 O f course, it is consequential for my own work practices that an examining

committee will read this thesis, not just to see in a realist-factual way what it says about
mathematical practice, but to see how satisfactorily it establishes the things I claim to
have observed.

117
drawing o f graphs.) A legend in one comer o f each sheet recorded the sequence of
different colors of ink, thus enabling me to recover the order in which marks had been
written.
By the end of the lesson, I had recorded words, mathematical ideographs and
graphs on a series o f sixteen sheets of acetate. Since direct photocopying o f these
transparencies would have lost the key features of spatial contextualization and
temporal sequencing, 1 had to create a new set of images, which I drew onto 8V2" x
11" sheets, re-creating the original three-panel layout.
I produced a sequence of 15 left panels, 14 centre panels, and 28 right
panels, and compiled a guide with which one can re-create the development of the
board. (One can see in the bottom right com er of each panel, a tiny square containing
a letter code for the panel (L,C,R) and its number in the sequence.)
Joan used the three panels o f the board in coordination; an artifact of my
redrawing the panels one at a time is that in figure 2 , the left, centre and right panels
appear to be more self-contained than they really were. For example, in frame 3, it is
not readily apparent that f(x) and J x + T were actually labels beside the curve in the
graph in the right panel. The spatial coordination of the three panels of the board was
not central to my inquiry, however, so I chose not to change this.
I will turn now to some issues around the meaning o f the figures. 1 relied on
my own knowledge o f mathematics to make sense o f the symbols. As a video would
have shown, the original board-work was written smoothly, not one word at a time

118
nor one line at a time. As I recorded this activity, I divided the marks into units,
based on my sense of what belonged together. For example, 1 would record an
expression like | 'fx T T - 2 | < e as a single unit, unless say for some reason Joan
paused for an inordinately long time while writing it.
Randomly-timed snapshots would have created a different impression o f the
board-work than figure 2 creates, but I used my understanding to produce coherent
images. In frames 5 and 6, for example, the equation 6= was left incomplete. 1 knew
by virtue of my familiarity with classroom discourse that this was not an error, that it
was a way o f stating that they would fill in the blank later.
As I redrew my record of the board-work from acetate onto paper, I noticed
there was a great deal o f taken-for-granted work which, despite its utter triviality, was
quite necessary for the exhibition o f a clear and convincing proof. For example, in
frame 2, the curve for / F + T extended ’far enough’ to the right beyond the value jt —3
that it intersected the horizontal line representing y = 2 + e . When I first drew the
curve, I made it too short, and 1 later had to extend it.
In the centre panel of frames 5 and 6, the statement | a | | b j = | ah |
was nowhere defined, yet it could clearly be seen as a general rule being cited to
justify the statement to its left on the same line:
) v^TT-2 | [VJ+t-k2.L=_ _ if e lj
|\/*+T +2| | vGf-f 1+2 |
For this contextual meaning to be clear, in frame 5, the text | a | | b | = | ab | had

119
to be positioned far enough from the adjacent expression that | a \ \ b | would not
be mistaken for another multiplicative factor, i.e.,
1 1 /7 + T -2 | | / 7 T T + 2 | | a | | b | ,
yet close enough and vertically aligned so that it would be seen as related.
In other words, if everything appears to be correct the first time, it is easy to
forget that it didn’t just happen automatically. Working through the process can make
the taken-for-granted visible. That is what I meant when 1 wrote in my thesis proposal
that the breaking o f mathematical rules by inexperienced university students might
make those rules more visible. One can take for granted actions which are done
correctly. But when people break rules — for example, Garfinkel’s (1967) students’
ending conversations by saying "Hello" — it becomes more apparent just how much
coordinating work goes into the maintenance o f smooth, routine social functioning.
Therefore, 1 suggest that during the proof in construction lesson, the writing
on the board should be left to a student rather than done by the professor. Though
Joan made some mathematical mistakes during the lesson, I suspect that as a skilled
mathematician and mathematics teacher, she did most of the writing so smoothly and
automatically as to make her work transparent to the students who were generating the
proof together with her. The process which the design o f the lesson was supposed to
emphasize might have been hidden through Joan’s fluency. By allowing a less-skilled
person to act as scribe, the everyday competencies required for proving could perhaps
have been made even more visible. The philosophical point o f the lesson, to reveal the

120
process by which mathematics is created, could be enhanced — though unfortunately
it might also become more difficult to complete the proof during a single lesson
period.
There is another sense in which breaking of rules is significant. It is tempting
to think that because the mathematical symbols are in isolation defined quite
unambiguously, the meaning of mathematical texts is then built up straightforwardly. I
have just illustrated that symbolic strings like | a \ \ b \ do not acquire their
meanings context-free. An inspection of how slips of the pen are understood can
further undermine the notion of context-free semantics in mathematics. In the right
panel o f frame 6, though the statement, 1/ | '/jc T T + 2 | < Vi, happened to be true,
it was not an immediate logical consequence of the previous line, but the context
indicated that it ought to have been written 1/ | v T + T + 2 | < ‘A. Indeed the
following line proceeded as if the correct statement had been made. The successful
interpretation of such erroneous inscriptions thus shows the importance of context.
To sum up this section, the frames of the figure in this chapter are not merely
pictures of the chalk-board; they are worked-up social objects, which embody my
knowledge of how to do mathematics and my intentions as a researcher.
5.4 Conclusion
By now I hope it is abundantly clear just how rich and complex the process
of developing a mathematical proof is. An important part of the process of proving is

121
to work through, perhaps stumble through, the small reminders, questions and
diagrams which clarify and build the final result.
One could interpret this process as an incarnation of an ideal, indeed that is
certainly the way 1 feel 1 was trained. 1 marked assignments and followed lectures
with scalpel in hand, so to speak, looking for what could be cut out, made more
elegant — reshaped in the image of the divine, one might almost say. 1 now adopt a
different perspective, however. While 1 would not deny the aesthetic appeal of a
polished proof, like the last eight lines of figure 1, for example, 1 do question such a
text’s pedagogical value.
1 summarize the key points of the chapter as follows. The diversity of
approaches to proving (e.g., emphasizing graphical tools to various degrees) weighs
against the utility of imagining an essence common to all. Instead, the actual work of
proving has its own ‘internal’ integrity. When provers solve problems which extend
their skills, rather than simply repeating established algorithms, their process is full of
‘distractions’ and false starts. It is through this work that ideas become objectively
sharable. Finally, the meanings of symbols arise through their temporal and spatial
context, not only through their denotative values; thus, interpretation is an intrinsic
part of the understanding of mathematical texts.

CHAPTER 6
ASSIGNMENT SOLUTIONS
Perhaps the most neglected existence theorem in mathematics is the existence of

people.
K.C. Hammer
Those truly committed to liberation . . . must abandon the educational goal of

deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of men in their
relations with the world. ‘Problem-posing’ education, responding to the essence
of consciousness — intentionality — rejects communiques and embodies
communication.
Paulo Freire,
Literary criticism can exist because we can appreciate a poem without

considering it to be perfect; mathematical or scientific criticism cannot exist
while we only appreciate a mathematical or scientific result if it yields perfect
truth.
Imre U katos,
So far in Part Two, I have described different ‘ways of reading’ mathematical
texts. In this chapter, I will pursue two main themes: first to carry out a reading of a
text to find its taken-for-granted work, and second, to show how the ways o f reading
have important implications for teaching and learning. In particular, 1 will demonstrate
examples of product-oriented, authoritarian practice in Math 120, and 1 will argue that
this practice is associated with the ‘realist-factual’ way of reading and with the
122

123
supposition of a transcendental ideal.
As chapters 2 and 3 explained, the key feature o f a constructivist model of
learning is that students adapt and assimilate ideas into their own frameworks of
understanding — which are themselves dialectically transformed in the process. The
mathematical concepts of limit and proof appearing in this chapter were understood by
the students each in their own particular ways. As I shall show, their understandings
may or may not have fit the accepted pattern, but did make sense on their own terms.
First 1 will extend the comparison between textbook and board-work by
showing some similarities and differences between one student’s proof and the other
proofs. 1 will be looking at what makes it recognizable as a proof, and how the goals
of students may enter into the text.
1 then turn to the interaction between the teaching assistant (TA), Don, and
the students. 1 show that Don compared the students’ proofs to an ideal object, and
found them wanting. Rather than read the students’ answers ‘interpretively’ as
attempts to accomplish a goal through communication, Don read them as
representations or replicas o f a structure he was expecting them to exhibit. In
particular his corrections show that he wanted to see certain formalisms emulated.
In this chapter 1 will thus put forward a constructivist critique of the remnants
o f traditional mathematical education in Joan’s class. I propose provisionally that the
solution lies in a form of dialogue based on authentic interpersonal interaction between
the TA and students. For this to happen, 1 argue, the TA must recognize the

124
intentionality underlying the students’ technical work, and must engage with the work
interpretively. In chapter 7 ,1 will problematize this approach, through a post-
structuralist discussion of the humanist assumptions in the notion of authentic
dialogue.
6.1 Assignments and data gathering
In a handout distributed on the first day o f class, Joan told the students, "The
assignments will be corrected but not graded. You will receive |full| credit for making
an honest attempt at the assigned problems." The purpose of this policy was to take
off some of the pressure to ‘get the right answer’, thus allowing the students to
practice using ideas and to learn from their mistakes without penalty.
The particular assignment I studied consisted of four questions taken from
Salas and Hille (1990). The one I analyze in detail here, question HO, was taken up
in class as the board-work proof that appeared in chapter 5. The question was as
follows:
Give an e, 6 proof that
i t a 3 /x + y = 2 .
1 analyzed the solutions by two students, whom 1 call Brian and Mona. On
the photocopies of their solutions to the assignment, I used a highlighter pen to
identify Don’s comments.
In figures 3 and 4 (pages 126 and 131), 1 have used the convention that

125
com puter-printed text and fine ball-point pen represent the solutions by students, while
bold felt pen represents D o n’s interventions. T he line num bers are my addition.
In class, Joan had introduced the relationship of e and 8 w ith an anecdote
about a professor w ho had looked at a lim it problem and after a m om ent announced a
com plicated form ula, som ething like 5=1/37 V c-1 . Sure enough, the value o f 5
w orked, but the students w ere none the w iser as to how to solve such a problem . This
w as a m otivation for Jo a n ’s use o f Salas and H ille’s heuristic; finding a 5 and only
then perform ing the form al p a n w hich m ost textbooks concentrate on, show ing that
that rule for 8 w orks. 1 w ill show in section 6.3 that at least one o f the students did
not m ake the transition from the first part o f this heuristic to the final stage.

126
Figure 3. Brian’s Assignment Solution
1 4j0 R T P Urn v W - 2
V RTP V e > 0 , 3 6 > 0 (0 < jx - 3/< 8 //r+ T -2 / < e.
P r o o f: Let 5- min {e ,4 }
\f£>0 3 S > 0 y
//x+J - 2 j - /v/x ¥ T - 2jj\/x+t f Z J 10 Therefore, whon-b «j t ~.
/Sx+T+ 2/ 11 f o r all x such
12 that 0 < j x - 3 / 0 and Ifx+l +2 >
9 < e w jm fb < e

127
6.2 A n interpretable text
In this section, I take up the issue of the taken-for-granted work which goes
into a text.
Most of Brian’s proof was straightforward; that is, he exhibited a sequence of
moves that was adequate in practice. There were only a few points where the structure
of relationships was not successfully constructed as an independent object, because
Brian made minor mistakes in proving. For example, one problem arose in Brian’s
understanding of the transition from line 7 to line 8, where he derived a larger
number, 8, by multiplying the previous expression by a quantity which was not just
positive but greater than 1; multiplying by, say, ‘A would not have accomplished the
desired result.
The equation declaring the value of delta, "6 = min(c,4}" (line 3) may have
come from a solution that had been presented earlier in class on the blackboard1, but
in any event it was a distillation of work that had been done already and does not
appear here, and was not even referred to.
The crucial interpretive issue is the goal of Brian’s proof. Brian stated the
definition correctly; however, the conclusion he drew points to an unorthodox
1 This is possibly because Brian did not refer again to the condition 8<4. If he had
developed the work himself, he would probably have used it in the proof.

128
interpretation of the definition.
It is a subtle task to prove an implication that has an existential quantifier
("there exists x such that...") or a universal quantifier ("for all x ..,”). To show that
v G t+ T = 2 , the prover must demonstrate, for all epsilon greater than zero there
exists a delta such that
if 0 < | jc-3 | <6 then | / T f T - 2 | < e . (*)
For each e the prover had to exhibit a 5 > 0 such that the implication held for that
combination o f 5 and e. What Brian did was show that "when 5 = min {f.,4}" the
implication (*) held. The dependence o f 6 upon an arbitrary positive e was not clearly
demonstrated. My interpretation of how Brian understood the definition was
corroborated by another of his answers, not shown in full here, in which he
concluded. If 6 < e/3, then for all x such that 0 < | x-2 | < 6 we have
| 3x-6 | < e ," i.e., the implication (*) held.
Now I look at the marker-student interaction, and consider the features which
make something recognizable as a comment by a marker, as distinguishable from what
a student would write. Even a third party observer, such as I, can see identifiable
features o f markers’ work. For example, markers may cross out what they consider
errors, substitute desired expressions, make check-marks, and pose questions.
The expression in the second-person, "You should explain..." (near line 5) is
intelligible as a command by someone in a position of authority. A student may

129
provide instructions to the grader as to how to interpret what they have written2 and
the students’ degrees o f deference or politeness may vary, but never in my experience
as a TA have I read an assignment where a student told me, "You should..."
Now I suggest that perhaps Brian did not fully understand the definition of
limit, although perhaps this was just a matter his not following the formalism. Don’s
response, however, did not address this aspect of the meaning of the solution; instead,
he proposed a correction, without explaining why the substitution mattered3. The
interaction between Don and Brian fell short of a ‘true’ dialogue.
1 draw the concept o f "dialogue" here from several sources. For Skovsmose,
"The main idea is simple: My knowledge is inadequate, it can be improved. But you
are in the same situation. To improve our understanding, to move in the direction of
more knowledge, we depend on each other" (1990, 126). For Paulo Freire, "Dialogue
is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world. . .
True dialogue cannot exist unless the dialoguers engage in critical thinking. . .
thinking which perceives reality as process, as transformation, rather than as a static
entity" (1990, pp. 76, 80-81); I suggest the static entity of Platonic mathematical
objects was part of the problem here. Skovsmose himself quoted Freire:
3 E .g., regarding another question on the same page, Brian wrote, "IGNORE THIS.
SEE BACK SIDE OF SECOND PAGE."
3 Incidentally, Don’s attention to rigor was not total. He did not remark on the
dropping o f the absolute value bars in the move between lines 4 and S.

130
T hrough dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the students-of-thc-tcachcr

cease to exist and a new term em erges: tcachcr-student with studcnts-
teachers. T h e teacher is no longer merely thc-onc-who-teachcs, but one who
is h im self taught in dialogue w ith students, who in their turn while being
taught also teach. T hey becom e jointly responsible for a process in which all
grow (Freire 1990, 53).
D o n ’s m arking here was an exam ple o f w hat Freire called the "banking" model of
education (1990). In this model, the teacher, who possesses the desired product, m akes
a deposit o f inform ation in the students, w ho receive it passively.
In this section I have show n one student’s understanding of the proof of the
proposition. T h is proof, like the board-w ork and textbook, is a self-contained entity in
the sense that it depends on com m on practice but not on the notion of ideal proof.

Figure 4. M ona’s A ssignm ent Solution
1 40 lim / x + 1 = 2
x->3
2 For all e >0, there exists y > 0
3 .ymc/z //to ///' 0 < [x - 3 j < y
4 /ten / / x + 1 - 2 / < e
5 / / T + T - 2 / = I S x T T - 2 f j / x + T + 2/
l / x + T + 2/
- x+ 1-4
/ / x + T + 2j
= JL=-J .
We. hegJI SM ■k l/x +T + 2/
Ko^< xi>
C WKy ? ; j/x + ] + 2j
< ^ because / x + 1 + 2 5:
10
11
12

132
6.3 A clash of language-games
As 1 have shown previously, the work of proving is goal-orientcd. In this
section, 1 interpret one student’s goal, and show the incompatibility of the language
games being played by her and Don. 1 suggest that to see a proof as an attempt to
persuade, rather than as a picture o f a logical structure, would enable a markcr-studcnt
relation more in keeping with the constructivist goals of the course, especially those
related to process-orientation.
In figure 4, what Mona has produced is not a fully adequate proof that
lim-j v T + T - 2 . It is, however, an adequate solution to a different problem, a problem
which it is entirely understandable for her to have answered. Mona has solved for the
variable gamma (y), I claim.
In university mathematics, one tries to create proofs, and the object one
exhibits as the answer — or in this course, an answer — is a coordinated sequence of
‘moves’ which taken as a whole convincingly demonstrate the truth of a proposition.
In high school mathematics, one tries to find the value of a variable, i.e., one solves
equations, and the object one exhibits as the answer is the value o f a variable. As
Kevin said to me during our interview, in high school, "with algebra, essentially all
you’re doing is isolating the variable" (921002 Side 1 p.3).
Joan had actually encouraged students to solve for ihe variable, in the proof-
in-construction stage. She said (personal communication) that what Mona failed to do

133
was make the transition to the polished proof.
One can see how the solution is oriented toward Mona’s goal, as one reads
line by line, beginning with the problem statement on line 1.
Lines 2-4 translated the problem statement into the same form as the standard
definition of limit. Compare these three lines with the corresponding lines 3-4 in
figure 1 (page 85). Both ended with an implication in the same form, derived from the
definition of limit (as it appeared above, page 128):
if 0 < | x - 3 | < 6 then | V x + T - 2 | < e . (*)
The textbook, however, was oriented toward proving that
for all epsilon greater than zero there exists a delta

such that the implication (*) holds. ($)
One proves this by choosing an arbitrary epsilon and producing a delta for this
epsilon; this is a crucial move in the proof. In contrast, Mona’s line 2 recited the line
(t) above, but she never performed the move that was required to prove ($).
Choosing an epsilon greater than zero was the move which Don supplied at line 5, as
1 shall show below.
Lines 5-10 were a fairly straightforward demonstration that | v T + T | < e.
The transition from line 7 to line 8 was notable in two respects. First, line 8 began
with the curious symbol H< \ Mona wrote an "equals" sign, and then corrected it to a
"less than" sign. That sequences of moves was objectively recoverable from the fact
that the latter symbol was written in heavier lettering, represented here by boldface.

134
Second, the transition relied on the unstated ‘fact’ that .x-3 < y • Now, line 3 contained
the expression | jc -3 | < y , but not standing free; rather, it was embedded in an
implication, "if | jc -3 | < y then. . I suggest that perhaps in this student’s
understanding of proof, one could cite as a fact any statement which has appeared
earlier, regardless o f its previous context, or possibly that their understanding of the
expression, "if. . . then. . .," was an incorrect one.
Mona’s concluding line was y < 2 e . " (line 12). This would make sense
if her object of interest were the value of a variable, y. Thus though line 11,
y l l < e," was somewhat redundant, recapitulating the transition from line 9 to
line 10, it worked as an intermediate move to make line 12 obvious.
1 have interpreted Mona’s answer as an attempt to find a suitable value for
the variable y. I now interpret Don’s response as an attempt to transform her answer
into the desired answer. 1 argue that he took a formalist approach in that he sought the
proper organization of symbols but did not engage with the meaning of the symbols as
Mona arranged them. That is, Don’s language game was to assess a picture of an ideal
model relative to the model itself, and to show how the former could be harmonized
with the latter.
Three times in the assignment as a whole (not illustrated here), Mona made a
claim of the form, "if \f(x)-4 | < e and 0 < | x-c | < 5 then J>£2C f(x) /." This was
duly corrected by Don to read, "if 0 < | x-c \ <8 *■* | f(x )4 | < e then ^ cf(x )- t,"
but he made no further comment. That is, his response did not reach toward an

135
interpretation of how Mona meant a statement, but pointed instead to an ideal
solution.
Returning to figure 4, 1 note that Don supplied two lines (at lines 5 and 6)
which belonged unambiguously to the desired solution. The first, "Let e > 0 be
given," was a move required in order to prove the complicated statement (t) above.
By choosing an arbitrary epsilon and then in the next line demonstrating a formula for
delta4, all that remained was to "show that delta ‘worked,’" as Salas and Hille’s
heuristic said.
Don’s next line, "We need 5 < 4 to have x > 1" could have been a suggestion
of an element that Mona should include in the ideal solution. Alternatively, Don could
have been trying to explain something directly to her. The parenthesized question,
"( Why? )" (line 8) was clearly a pedagogical device directed toward the student —
echoing line 6 of figure 1, in fact. The TA had to know the answer to this rhetorical
question. Pimm (1987, 55) has noted the prevalence o f asking questions one already
knows the answers to. It reinforces the position of the expert.
Now, what WuS the purpose of this condition, 6 < 4 , in the solution? It was to
4 Incidentally, throughout the assignment, Mona used the symbol gamma (y) instead
of the standard delta (Si) from the definition of limit. Don ignored this peculiarity, treating
the gamma as if it were a delta, and neither commenting on nor adopting her usage. On
the one hand this could be — contrary to my general claim of formalism on his part —
an example of his treating the student's communication as adequate to the task at hand,
rather like not pointing out that someone in an oral examination has mispronounced a
word, as long as one understands what they mean. On the other hand, it could be an
authoritarian insistence that she use the conventional 6.

136
prevent x from being less than -1 , in which case the function 7 v + l w ould be
undefined there. But this was indeed a 'p ic k y ’ point. According to the intuitive
definition of limit, " \ f ( x ) - l \ can be m ade arbitrarily small simply by requiring that
| x - c | be sufficiently sm all but different from zero" (Salas & Hille 1990, 57). When
o ne is intuitively proving a statement about a function of this sort, epsilon-values of
1/2 or 1/10 might be considered 'sm all’; an epsilon of 4 or 10 w ould not. So though
the precise equation, 8 = m in [4 ,2 c ), did o f course work when epsilon is 10 — whereas
8 = 2 e would result in an error ■— a prover w ould not really care about the case e —10
unless they held absolute precision as an ideal. If the standard is routine
communicative persuasiveness, the precise equation complicates matters unnecessarily.
In the concluding lines of the answ er, I believe that the breakdow n of the
dialogue became com plete. Don crossed out line 11, which had been an intermediate
m o v e in the progression toward the goal o f stating the value of gam m a in line 12; in
the representation of the correct logical structure, however, line 11 w ould serve no
purpose. Don changed the "therefore" (.•.) statem ent in line 12 to a "since" (v)
statement, and moved the whole statement up to line 10, where it w ould justify the
n ew conclusion that | "7x4-1—2 1 was less than epsilon. From there, having picked an
arbitrary epsilon greater than zero, as in D o n ’s intervention at line 5, one could then
s h o w that the conditions were satisfied for the statement (.|) above. Don ignored what
M o n a was trying to do, and told her how to turn her solution into a correct answer
w hich had no extraneous pieces such as line 11.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n o f t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

137
In this section, I have led the reader through an interpretive approach to
Mona’s solution. I claim that seeing mathematical proofs thus, as performative
objects, breaks the compelling hold of the model of proofs as representations of
transcendental objects, a model which invites a product-oriented and non-constructivist
interaction between TA and student.
6.4 The need for dialogue
1 wish to emphasize that my criticisms of the marker-student interaction are
not at all intended to single out Don, though I use his work as an example. Joan told
the class at the start of term that Don had a reputation as an excellent TA, and I have
no doubt that his reputation is well-deserved. I saw ample evidence that he was
knowledgeable about the subject matter and conscientious in his analysis o f students’
solutions.
The problem I see is not individual. It is a matter of structures, o f a
compelling and hegemonic common-sense understanding of what it is to be a good
mathematics TA. In the interests of ensuring that mathematical truth is safely
reproduced, one feels somehow bound to interact in ways which may result in
silencing students. 1 myself have felt the force o f this way of working, and despite my
best intentions have found myself telling students what to do and how to do it. I felt
torn between a strong desire to give affirmative feedback and to see students ‘get it
right’.

138
My suggested remedy is hardly that markers should stop criticizing errors on
assignments. By showing the constructed nature of mathematical objects, my aim has
not been to relativize knowledge in such a way that 25 times 25 became anything
other than 625 — assuming we are using ordinary integer arithmetic written in base-
ten notation, of course.
I do, however, argue that the way of seeing mathematical objectivity as the
product of situated communicative practices may be of educational benefit in three
ways: 1) it may lead to more contextually-appropriate standards of assessment, such as
— one hopes — are more routinely applied to other communicative objects like
essays; 2) markers may take more responsibility for treating a mathematical answer
respectfully if it is seen as a student’s personal output rather than as a representation
of a transcendental object; and 3) it may lead to better mutual understanding, by
teacher, TA and student, of one another’s conceptual frameworks.
If the point of the exercise referred to in this chapter was to have each
student produce the desired object, a complete epsilon-delta proof that
jim3 y/x+ T = 2, then Don’s alteration of the students’ solutions would be
appropriate. If, however, the exercise was intended to facilitate the student’s
understanding, then it would be better for him to respond by engaging with the
students’ answers on their own terms. Understanding the students’ concepts of proof
and limit would make it possible to lead them forward, according to Vygotskii’s idea
of the "zone of proximal development" (1986). In contrast, the ideal representation of

139
proof or of limit may be beyond students’ immediate reach. Here one can see the
power relations of a non-dialogical approach.
In conclusion, I will now develop the above three points in greater depth:
First, the standards o f assessment should relate to the task at hand. In the
course o f spoken communication, inexactness is not a flaw, it is what allows the
conversation to proceed forward at all without endless specification of details.
In contrast, in the mathematics course, Joan held up precision as an ideal. "In
math it’s really important that we be very, very precise" (920917.1). Only once
axiomatic rigor had been established as the ultimate standard, did she relent and allow
more informal proofs.
In figure 4, Don’s focus on rigor was distracting from the communication of
the concept o f limit. He pointed out that a fully adequate proof would require
eliminating the possibility of x being less than -1 , yet he did not deal with a more
important problem in the structure of the proof. The standard o f communicative
adequacy should be emphasized more than total precision, at least in certain contexts
— and 1 would argue that this assignment was one such context, given that developing
the students’ concepts o f proof and limit were the primary goal here.
A related point is that an expectation of exactness is implicated in power
relations. Don’s insistence on details is somewhat reminiscent o f ethnomethodological
"breaching" demonstrations (Garfinkel 1967; Sharrock and Anderson 1986), in which
the experimenters broke rules of conversational interaction in order to show that taken-

140
for-granted activities were actually quite complexly organized, with non-conforming
behaviour resulting in surprising sanctions. In the case below5, the experimenter’s
demands for precision quickly provoked a startling display of verbal abuse.
On Friday night my husband and I were watching television. . .

S: All these old movies have the same kind of old iron bedstead in
them.
E: What do you mean? Do you mean all old movies, or some of
them, or just the ones you have seen?
S: What’s the matter with you? You know what 1 mean.
E: I wish you would be more specific.
S: You know what 1 mean! Drop dead!
(Garfinkel 1967, 43)
I suggest that one characteristic o f schooling is that teachers and TAs arc in a position
to demand precision; in conversation among equals this is unusual.
Second, students invest intellectual and emotional energy in their assignments,
even abstract problem sets like these. They may find it Jsconrerting at best when
their efforts are rejected as inadequate. While Don avoided conveying harsh
judgements on the assignments 1 read, insensitive marking in mathematics is not rare.
1 confess that I have on numerous occasions written, "This makes no sense!"
on mathematics assignments, yet in the context of marking essays 1 could not imagine
actually succumbing to such an impulse. Instead in the latter case I have written, "I
don’t understand what you are trying to do here." Comparing the two judgements, the
former supposes an objective standard of sense, while the latter supposes that the
5 1 chose this example especially because it revolves around a universal quantifier,

"all,” which may be used in a conversationally-adequate way which does not
corresponding to the 'exact’ mathematical meaning

141
answer made sense to a student whose communicative intent 1 acknowledged even
though 1 could not grasp it.
1 argue that the non-dialogical discursive practices 1 have described account
for much o f the discomfort some students feel when they are studying mathematics. I
will return to this point in the closing chapter.
Third, for successful communication, interpretation is required. O f course, in
one sense, Don cannot avoid interpreting the students’ answers. Even if he had sought
only a correct arrangement of formal symbols, which he did not, it would be quite
inaccurate to say he had read the answers at a purely syntactic level. That would be a
case only of constituting the meaning through a narrow language-game of imitating
patterns, not a case of ‘meaningless’ symbols. One cannot escape meaning and
interpretation.
Yet in a different sense, Don has sometimes missed what ‘sympathetic
interpretation’ would reveal in the students’ proofs. Instead of responding to the
students’ intentions, he has sometimes written comments in the expectation that a
student is really playing the game that the course demands. Students reading Don’s
interventions might perform their own sympathetic interpretation and realize what
concepts he must have been using to generate such comments. Or they might be
unable to make the conceptual leap, and feel their answer was being judged
arbitrarily, because they still didn’t see the difference between their answer and what
the marker substituted.

In this chapter, I have shown how a ‘model solution’ has produced
unsuccessful communication between TA and students. Using the idea that
mathematical texts are language-games and not simply representations of mathematical
objects, I have argued for the need for dialogue. Learning to see texts in this way
would, 1 suggest, lead to better assessment, more affirmative feedback and enhanced
understanding. This chapter also points to the "eed for better communication between
the professor and TA in an experimental course. After discussion with me, Joan felt
that unless the TA attended classes to get a sense of her philosophy of education, it
might be inappropriate to have a TA for such a course. This is again an indication that
power in the classroom is not controlled completely by the professor; though Don was
in a relatively subordinate position, he still could produce and act on meanings
relatively autonomously.

CHAPTER 7
ERROR ANALYSIS ASSIGNMENT
I have not yet made the role of miscalculating clear. The role of the proposition:
"1 must have miscalculated". It is really the key to an understanding of the
'foundations’ o f mathematics.
Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Remarks on the Foundations o f Mathematics
This chapter is my culminating case study of mathematical objectivity as
practice. Here I show the ‘out-thereness’ o f mathematics both being recognized by the
Math 120 students and also actively being produced by them. The error analysis
assignment asked students to review their answers on a test, explaining how and why
they erred. I argue that through the process of the error analysis, students confronted a
standard of correctness beyond the subjective understanding they had held at the time
they wrote the te st and by writing about what they "should have done" or about what
"wasn’t allowed," students reinscribed the authority o f that standard. And most
importantly, in the process, the students produced themselves as mathematics students.
1 also show that the assignment was structured as a confession, and thus drew the
students and teacher into complex power relations. Thus the error analysis assignment
should not be read as a straightforward story about liberation through the transition
from impersonal to personal ways of knowing. The production of a subject position
143

144
was intimately tied to the operation of power.
In this chapter, I make three major points. First, the assignment organized
how students internalized an objective standard of right and wrong. Second, the
assignment led students to analyze a situated and concrete practice of mathematics,
namely the work which they personally had done at the time of the test. Third, the
texts that appear here as illustrations were students’ performances rather than simply
their representations of what happened.
The assignment generated some opportunities for dialogue of the type 1
advocated in chapter 6. A positive value I see in this is that the assignment pushed
outward and perhaps blurred the disciplinary borders of mathematics. I show that the
writing on this assignment was more personal and less "sublimed" (Anderson, Hughes
and Sharrock 1988) than is typical of mathematics solutions, with respect to students’
choice of personal pronouns, verbal tenses and vocabulary. This more humanistic
element brought with it some interesting tensions, however. I consider it problematic
that students were put in the position of having to ‘confess their mathematical sins’,
thereby enmeshing them in a web of power effects which are not typically visible in
mathematics. And as 1 will explain below, the assignment may have reinforced a
scientistic way of thinking about truth and error. On the other hand, I find that fixed
positions o f student and teacher were sometimes challenged through this assignment;
perhaps the assignment simply made more explicit the power dynamics which were
already active in that classroom.

145
I begin the body of the chapter with a description in section 7.1 of the
assignment, including the main mathematical problem. In section 7.2, figure 6 (page
152) illustrates Smith’s (1990a) concept of textually-mediated social relations, and
shows the pedagogical value of the error analysis assignment, in that a student, Julia,
who had written a very poor answer to one question on the test, was able to
demonstrate her understanding of what she had done wrong. In so doing, she and
other students produced objective knowledge. In section 7 . 3 , 1 concretely illustrate the
contrast between sublimed and situated mathematical writing, through the work of a
student named Carol (figure 7, page 158). I also show, however, that students’
understanding of their errors was not always enhanced by their reference to a model
solution.
In section 7.4, 1 pursue my ongoing concern with language as performance,
showing that students were not simply telling what happened on their tests, but were
presenting themselves to an audience, as favorably as they could. I then look toward
the discourses of mathematics in which the course’s interpersonal interactions were
embedded. The discursive resources the students chose to use for their task o f self
presentation demonstrate their ranking o f mathematical ability over memoty and other
skills. It is in such ways that the cultural power o f mathematics is produced and
reproduced.

Figure 5. E rro r A nalysis Assignm ent.
146
M ATH 120
Error Analysis on Test 1: Due in class, November 10
An error analysis is a second chance - an opportunity to improve your performance on tire test and
to learn from the experience. All students are encouraged to submit an error analysis.
1. Only look at those questions for which you did not receive a perfect score. This includes
questions you did not answer for whatever reason.
2. Start the error analysis by writing out a full, correct answer to the question. This solution can
be got by consulting with a friend, by studying solutions to similar problems done in class or
in the course text or, as a last resort, by consulting with Don or me,
3. Directly below your correct answer, explain what vour mistake was. Be specific and clear.
Don't say 'I didn't understand the question'. Instead convince me that you know where you
went wrong and why. Was it due to unclear thinking? Misreading the question? A technical
error? An omission? etc.? To get you started I have indicated with an arrow the line(s) or
step(s) in your answer to the question where things start to go wrong.
4. Include your original test at the back of your error analysis.
5. Your error analysis will be graded out of S. This will count towards your participation grade in
the course. As well, your test score will be ammended according to the following formula:
T = t+ S (50 - 1)
10
where t = test score (out of 50), e = score on error analysis (out of 5) and T = ammended test
score.

147
7.1 Description o f the assignment
In this section, I describe the assignment design, my data collection
procedures and the mathematical problem found in the main examples.
The error analysis assignment built in an extra cycle of interaction beyond
that of the usual assignment or test. As 1 describe below, tne test pages circulated
from Joan to the students, back to Joan for grading, to the students for the error
analysis, to Don for marking and grading, and then finally to the students. Joan
adapted the assignment instructions (see figure 5, page 146) from Rogers (1992).
Before the first class test, Joan told the students that there would be an
opportunity for them to raise their grades later by doing an "error analysis
assignment." This was not the assignment’s only purpose, nor even its main one;
Rogers reported, "Many students tell me that they appreciate the opportunity to learn
from their mistakes without being penalized for making them. 1 have also found that it
improves the learning environment in the class and reduces students’ test anxiety"
(Rogers 1992, 92).
The test was designed by Joan for her section o f Math 120. It covered
material from the course’s first three weeks, which emphasized proofs o f propositions
about real numbers and about mathematical functions — thus its content predated the
material on epsilon-delta proofs which I described in chapters 4 through 6.
Students wrote the test in class. Joan timed how long it had taken her to

148
answer the questions herself, and then multiplied by a grace factor. She told the class,
"You’re not going to be scribbling like mad. 1 want you to have time to think"
(921020.5). (As it turned out, however, she had misjudged the difficulty of the test,
and many students were unable to complete all the questions. She therefore decided to
remove the final question from the grading scheme, making the test out of 45 instead
of 50 points, and treating any points earned on that question as a bonus.)
Joan graded the test, generally without verbal comment, simply "indicat|ing|
with an arrow the line(s) or step(s). . . where things start|ed| to go wrong" (figure 5).
Students had more than a week to work on the error analysis assignment,
which had two components. Joan told them, "Start the error analysis by writing out a
full, correct answer to the question. . . Directly below your correct answer, explain
what your mistake was. . . Convince me that you know where you went wrong and
why" (figure 5, emphasis original). 1 call these components the ‘revised solution’ and
the ‘error explanation’, respectively, and 1 use the term 'error analysis’ for the pair.
Don marked and graded the error analyses. The students’ grades on the test
were increased according to the formula in step 5 of figure 5, which was adjusted for
the fact that the maximum test grade had become 45.
The cycle of correction and re-submission could in principle have been
repeated until a student finally produced a ‘perfect’ solution and explanation, but in
practice there was no further exchange of written material1, though a student might
1 In the course following Math 120, such exchanges did tccur.

149
approach the teacher in person to say they still didn’t understand what was wrong with
a certain solution, and he given a clarification — likely in the form of a Socratic
question.
1 now very briefly mention how 1 obtained the texts I examine here. 1
selected two or three students from each of five grade strata on the test, i.e., 10-19,
20-24, 25-29, 30 1 , 40-45, because 1 expected there might be important differences
in the type of explanations offered by stronger and weaker students. I photocopied
these students’ error analyses and test solutions. As with Don’s marks in chapter 6, 1
noted Joan’s marks with a highlighter.
In this chapter’s figures, the students’ error analyses are italicized and my
editorial interventions are in a Roman font. Comments by Joan or Don are represented
by felt-tip pen. 1 have endeavoured to preserve the spatial organization of the texts as
much as possible.
1 will now explain the mathematical problem which was the basis for most of
the examples in this chapter. The mathematical content of these examples may appear
to have more to do with algebra than with calculus; however, the first three weeks of
Math 120 were spent on an axiomatic approach to the fundamental algebraic properties
of the real number system, and the first test reflected that focus.
1 have chosen to concentrate here on the answers to a single question, #1B,
for several reasons. It was generally not done well on the test; of the dozen solutions I
read, only two received full marks, and the median grade was onl_ 1.5 points out of

ISO
5, so there was ample opportunity for students to analyze errors. These errors ranged
in severity from simply leaving out justifications that could be expressed in a single
line, to quite significant logical leaps, to the most serious conceptual error, circular
reasoning. The solutions were all fairly brief, so that 1 could present several, finally,
I judged the technical content more accessible than that o f another question, 01C,
which 1 also analyzed.
In their proofs on the test, students were allowed to use only a given set of
propositions about the real numbers, and the statements derived in earlier questions on
the test; during the test, a copy was provided of a condensed version of a handout
(appendix 1) containing the propositions, labelled PI through P12. It turned out that
many students broke the ‘rules of the game’ by using common-sense facts they knew
about concepts like negative numbers.
1 now introduce the notation found in question 01B. The additive inverse of
b, denoted - b, was defined to be the number2 that when added to b (on the right!)
yielded zero (see axiom P3). The dot represented multiplication, which was also
represented by juxtaposition sometimes. The question was:
Prove a ' (- h ) = - (a • h).
In other words, students had to show that the additive inverse of the product of any
two numbers was the product of the first number with the additive inverse of the
2 or rather, a number, because they had yet to establish that b could not have several
different additive inverses.

151
second number. A concrete example of this would be -(3 • 4) = 3 • (-4). This may
appear to be a perfectly obvious fact, but the problem was that the normal operations
on numbers all had to be justified in relation to the axioms. Thus, students who
operated at the level of syntactic manipulation of symbols could easily err, for
example, by treating the rule (~x) = -l(x) simply as ‘moving brackets’ rather than as
a substantive algebraic operation.
7.2 Internalized objectivity
In this section, 1 discuss how students accepted objective standards of
mathematical work which the error analysis assignment set out. In my understanding
of rules, influenced by ethnomethodology, a rule exists in and through people’s
actions in maintaining and following it. For example, in chapter 2, the queue achieved
its status of reality in that people in and near the queue performed together the work
o f recognizing and maintaining the queue.
Thus I want to emphasize that, in Math 120, what gave the standards their
form and substance was the maintenance work done by the students, for example,
when they acknowledged errors and engaged in the self-criticism in this assignment,
and by Joan and Don when they pointed out errors and explained mathematical
techniques. Certainly most of these standards originated externally to the course;
however, their social reality within the course was a local affair, hooked into the
larger context through the textbook, course handouts, and other resources.

Figure 6. Julia’s test solution and error explanation.
Julia’s test solution

0
Prove a • (-b) = - ( a 'b )
if atP and -b eP *)
By PJ2 a-(b)tP $ —
By P8 a(-b) = (~b)(a)
By P8 a(-b) = -0 a ) 4 --------
P8 a(-b) = -(ab)
it is proved that a(-b) =-(ab)
1nlia’s error explanation
Errors:
I f atP and -btP The original statement does

by P12 a(-b)eP not allow us to assume
that a and b are eP.
/ cannot assume that a( - b)(P,
a(-b) = (-b)(a)
By P8 a(-b) - -0 a ) This last statement states what
I want to prove , but I haven't
actually proved it,
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n p roh ibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

153
Using Smith’s concept of textually-mediated social relations, I argue that
certain ways of understanding o f truth and error both organized and were organized by
the assignment handout (figure 5). To talk of these as social relations is to see them as
"sequences |o f action| which no one individual completes" (Smith 1990b, 94). That is,
Joan’s instructions were directing courses of action by the students; if these
instructions were or were not followed, she would then be mandated to take certain
further actions.
The first practice was to distinguish sharply between perfection and
imperfection. Questions for which the student received a perfect score were treated
very differently, in that they were not to be analyzed. This way of organizing the
assignment thus provided practical training in thinking about mathematical truth in
absolutist terms.
Second, the assignment enabled a shared recognition o f the potential
multiplicity of correct answers. Joan referred to a correct answer, not the correct
answer. This was in keeping with her other ways of encouraging alternative solutions.
Third was to see objectivity as social, in that the assignment handout
suggested that a correct solution would be a socially recognized solution. The solution
might come from a friend, from an example done in class, from the textbook, or as a
last resort, from an authority such as Joan or Don; the list of suggested methods did
not mention pure individual reason. That is, the expectation was not for students to
search on their own for a correct answer, but to grasp and internalize the workings of

154
an answer whose (relative) certainty was established by the community; this answer
could then serve as a solid basis for proceeding with the analysis of their errors.
Finally, the assignment directed students to recognize and produce standards
of correctness. It enabled an identification of the four given categories as important
types of error — circular reasoning was missing from the list for example — by
directing students to look for certain kinds of error. 1 argue that the standards existed
through the work that members o f the class performed, in particular, through the
conformity of students to these categories.
I would argue that my interpretation o f the production of objectivity is
supported by the actions of some marker/graders. That is, I think some markers are
intent on noting every error because they believe that if they as markers did not do the
work of noting an error, the student might not come to recognize that it really was an
error. As one mathematics professor bluntly put it to me, "If they’re writing garbage
you have to let them know it’s garbage." (1 will return to this idea in the final
chapter.) In other words, graders recognize that it requires work on their part to
produce objectively the incorrectness of an incorrect answer.
I now present Julia’s test solution and error explanation (figure 6). Her work
shows the error analysis as an effective learning tool, in that Julia’s answer to question
# IB on the test was given a grade of zero, but she was able to diagnose her problem
accurately.
Julia’s test solution recognized and used mathematical rules such as the

155
commutative axiom for multiplication, a (-b ) - (- b)(a), thereby re-creating those
rules’ reality in the local context. The ‘P8’ rule she used the second time, was
incorrect, however, and Joan marked the solution accordingly. Joan helped to produce
the reality o f the incorrectness of Carol’s test solution by giving it a zero.
Joan had warned students earlier about circular logic. In the fourth lecture, a
student had been trying to prove the transitivity of the "less than" relation, i.e., that if
a < b and b < c then a < c. The student had reasoned that if a - b < 0 and
0 < c ~ b then a - b < c - h . Joan said, "We have no axioms to allow us to do
this. This is what’s called a circular argument because you’ve used inside your
argument the thing that you’re trying to prove"3 (920924.5). On another day, Joan
said, "Using what you were trying to do — er, to prove — inside your proof is
probably the biggest crime you can make in mathematics" (921001.2).
Julia did not use the term "circular reasoning" — which had not been one of
the categories of error offered on the handout, but her description showed she
understood the concept. Don was so pleased with her answer that he wrote "Yes!"
with a triple underscore.
Julia’s work actively internalized the standards of mathematical objectivity in
that she acknowledged what the original statement (of the problem) did "not allow us
to assume." In the latter part o f her error explanation, Julia wrote two observations
which Don could read as a diagnosis of an error; the conceptual structure of the
3 One can think of a, as a - b\ b, as 0; and c, as c - b.

156
answer, organized by the handout, was that an error explanation was expected. Here
Don could fit her sentence into a conceptual framework; without the organization
provided by the handout, he might or might not be able to supply her missing
conclusion, "so I have made the mistake of circular reasoning" and indeed her answer
itself would not have been occasioned.
To sum up, Julia’s work was organized by the assignment handout in such a
way that objective standards of mathematical error and truth were her practical textual
accomplishment.
7.3 Sublimed and situated writing
In this section, my emphasis is on the concreteness of the accounts students
produced in their error explanations. I show there is a marked contrast in writing style
between the revised solutions and the error explanations. 1 will discuss how this way
o f writing inducted students into thinking about error in a way which is characteristic
of scientists, and probably of mathematicians too.
The assignment led students to write mathematics in a grounded way that they
might not have done before. In my experience, it is fairly common for people to
speak mathematically in a grounded and personal way but written mathematics is
usually much more "sublimed" (Sharrock and Anderson 1984).
Gilbert and Mulkay, in a study of the ways leading biochemists accounted for
the findings they and their colleagues had produced, developed a distinction, which 1

157
apply to the revised solutions and error explanations, between an "empiricist
repertoire" of communication and a "contingent repertoire." In the empiricist
repertoire, findings are described to a formal audience as if an external reality
completely determined what the scientists had observed (1984, 56). The dry
authoritativeness of this form is characteristic o f writing in scientific journals. In the
"contingent repertoire,. . . speakers gave accounts in which it was accepted that their
professional actions and scientific views could have been otherwise if their personal or
social circumstances had been different" (1984, 57).
Scientists do routinely recognize and use both modes o f speech, but in
dif ferent contexts; the contingent repertoire would normally be considered out o f place
in a formal setting — or in any writing other than a personal letter.
The contrast between the revised solution and error explanation is strikingly
similar to the contrast between empiricist and contingent repertoires — and in fact
Gilbert and Mulkay did note that scientists typically used the contingent repertoire
when accounting for errors, particularly their rivals’ errors. So discussing errors using
situated language may actually help to induct students into scientific ways of thinking,
i.e. to produce them as scientists.

Figure 7. Carol’s test solution and error analysis. 158
Carol’s test solution
0 prove l fa ,b %R then a • (-b) - -fa -b )
pro o f a • ~b = a • (-b + 0) identity

- fa - -b) + 0) associative
= -fa -b )
Carol’s error analysis
I. 0 ) Assume acR
<Dy RTP
bt*
a • f-b) - -fa -b )
p ro o f b + f-b) = 0 ( inverse P.3)

a b + a f-b) « 0 -a ( distribution P.9)
a b + a f-b) - 0 ( secondary p ro o f)
-fab) + (fab) + a f-bJ - 0 + ( - fab)) ( inverse P .3 ),
0 -t a f-b) = 0 +(-(ab)) (b y inverse P.3) t t i
af-b) + 0 = (-fab)) + 0 ( commutative P. 4)
a(-b) = -fab) ( by identity P. 2)
■■■ Q ED .
[ j au
secondary proof < k\ i tertiary proof
acR -* a - 0 = 0
RTP a - 0 = 0
p ro o f a - (0 + b )~ fa -0 ) + fa- b) ( distribution P.9/
a - b = a - 0 + (a -b ) ( identity P .2)
(a ■0) + (a b) - a -b ( b y symmetry )
ua -0 )+ (a -b p - f - f a ■b))= (a - b )+ (-fa - b)) ( inverse P.3 )
a -0 + 0 - 0 (by inverse P .3) ,
a -0 - 0 (by inverse P .3)
Q.E.D.
y ! w asn'/ thinking o f having to have prove

additional proofs in order to prove this. I also warn'/ thinking
along the line o f possibly using ‘distribution’ to help
me with this proof.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

159
1 now introduce Carol’s solution and error analysis (figure 7, page 158),
which shows a sharp contrast in styles between the revised solution and the error
explanation. Notice that the verb structure she used in the error explanation was quite
complex, if grammatically non-standard, while in the revised solution there was but a
single verb, in a conventional imperative form, "Assume"; in the former, there were
no pronouns at all, while in the latter, she used "I."
The rest of the students showed similar contrasts, in pronouns, the tense and
voice o f verbs, and vocabulary.
I found just a single reference to human agents anywhere among the revised
solutions to question ft IB: "W£ know (-(ab)) is a number by P}" (Simon, #1B,
emphasis added), and even this was a conventional "we." In Anna’s solution, the
verbs’ subjects were omitted altogether, e.g., "— have to prove can add brackets and
will still be true" (#1B).
In contrast, in every single one of the dozen error explanations for question
#1B that I read, the student used the pronouns "I” or "my" somewhere. Only one
person used the first person plural at all, "The original statement does not allow us to
assume that a and b are eP” (Julia, #1B, emphasis added, figure 6, page 152).
Carol’s revised solution was perhaps extreme in that it contained only a single
English verb; however, even in the other students’ solutions, the few verbs that I saw
were mostly imperative forms, e.g., "Keep both sides equal by adding same thing"
(Martin, #1B), and impersonal constructions with a past participle, e.g., the

160
justifications "P16 as proved," (Steve, 01B) or "given," (Anna, Phil and Steve, 01B)
or infinitives defining the task, "To prove: a - 0 = 0 ” (Vincent, 01B). The past tense
did not occur anywhere in the revised solutions.
As 1 wrote in chapter 4, the use of the present tense in mathematics is
consistent with a timeless Platonic universe. The past tense tends to limit a claim,
making it less transcendent. That is what Anna did in her error explanation, "I really
moved the brackets around without proving that the statement still equal" (01B,
emphasis added).
Fewer than half the students put a verb into the passive voice anywhere in
their error explanations. Steve came closer than anyone else to cli: >mating the
presence of an active mathematician from his error explanation, which 1 quote in full:
My major mistake here was in trying to figure out a way to remove the negative
sign to the outside and enclosing -(ab) in brackets from the left side to the right
side. My thought process was wrong when it could be accomplished by adding
-(ab) to both sides and cancelling the other terms after manipulating them
(Steve, 01B, emphases added).
Steve’s verbal constructions using the passive voice and gerunds hid the fact that he
would be the person accomplishing the removal o f the negative sign and the cancelling
of the terms. In contrast, a more representative error explanation was Martin’s, in that
he, like other students, made his personal presence visible:
1 had problems with this question because 1 couldn’t get the organization right. I
had trouble finding where to go. It was also the question I left to the end of the
test so I ran out of time -* that’s why I didn’t prove a - a - 0 (Martin, 01B).
Thus the grammatical structure o f the revised solutions was much more

161
impersonal. The vocabulary of the error explanations was also quite different from the
dry formality found in the revised solutions. Phil’s comments on one proof were
particularly vivid.
Basically my mistakes were leaving out the axioms where indicated by an arrow.
The reason they were left out is because 1 think in the madness of trying to give
good logical reasons for each line 1 blindly skipped the basic axioms for a basic
step from a1+2ab+b} to (a+b)2. In the frenzy I forgot to include all the axioms
involved, I overlooked them (Phil, #3, emphases added).
Brian also used colorful language on occasion:
Again it did not occur to me that I would be able to use ‘one-to-one’ as a

reason. I was thinking only in terms of axioms, definitions and earlier proof*.
(Thus, in desperation. I could only come up with the ‘equalities’ reason) (Brian,
#2, emphasis added).
Clearly, mathematics was an emotionally-charged human practice for such students.
An important element of the situatedness of the mathematical practice the
students were analyzing in the error explanation was that they had had limited time to
write the test. I was surprised, but should not have been, when I first read Mike’s
explanation for question #4B, "1 had no time for this question." The possibility that
this might have happened had actually occurred to me as 1 was reading their test
solutions, but when 1 read their error explanations, I somehow expected ‘pure’
reasons, as if the students were infinitely fast but conceptually slightly muddled
computers. My expectation was a consequence, I feel, o f a disembodied conception of
mathematics; once 1 had achieved the gestalt switch of seeing mathematics as practice,
1 came to think of such situated crises as running out o f time, as a vital and perhaps

162
almost indispensable part of actually doing the mathematics on a test.
One aspect o f sublimation 1 discussed in chapter 6 was that concretely-
produced mathematical texts may be judged against an ideal standard. Here 1 wish to
suggest briefly that perhaps by placing the correct solution ahead o! the error
explanation, the assignment created a dynamic whereby comparison between the test
solution and the ideal revised solution displaced the analysis of the test solution’s
errors. For example, though Carol’s error explanation did adequately describe a gap
separating the test solution from the revised solution4, it was completely
unilluminating about what was actually the matter with her test solution: the fact that
her ‘associative’ law mixed two different operations.
In this section, 1 have studied how analyzing and fixing errors contributed to
the students’ development as budding mathematicians. Not only were they constructing
solutions to a mathematical problem, they were also constructing themselves as
(Winsor 1990b, 1992). And here many of them learned that
they could write about mathematics as a situated practice and not only as an austere
and timeless conceptual universe, though this also reproduced the dualistic separation
between truth as objective and error as subjective.
4 Here, by the way, is an indication of Don’s meticulousness: he did not merely

check for improperly justified deductions in Carol’s answer, but considered how the
pieces fit together to make a total proof, thereby spotting the fact that Carol’s tertiary
proof — though correct — was unnecessary.

163
7.4 Error explanation as confession
Throughout this thesis, 1 have argued that language serves purposes beyond
representation. In this section, 1 avoid a realist-factual reading of the error analyses as
literal accounts of what happened on their tests. Instead I show that the students’ error
explanations can be seen as performances directed toward an audience, including Don,
Joan and themselves. In these performances, the student exploited certain ‘resources’
in the discourse of mathematics and education.
In the previous section, I referred to the assignment as a way for students to
construct themselves as members of the mathematical community. Here 1 amplify the
theme, by arguing that in this assignment, they became not only knowing subjects but
also objects of their own knowledge. The assignment was for them a tool in
constituting the self.
In The History of Sexuality (1990), Michel Foucault showed that the
confessional is now in modern Western society a privileged form of reaching truth. He
trac'-d its history from the medieval Catholic sacrament through to the modern belief,
rooted in Freudian psychoanalysis and commonly expressed in pop psychology, that
full disclosure is inherently more honest and liberating than secrecy.
Next to the testing rituals, next to testimony of witnesses, and the learned
methods of observation and demonstration, the confession became one of the
West’s most highly valued techniques for producing truth. We have since
become a singularly confessing society. The confessional has spread its effects
far and wide. It plays a part injustice, medicine, education, family
relationships. . . one confesses one’s crimes, one’s sins, one’s thoughts and
desires, one’s illnesses and troubles (Foucault 1990, 59).

164
He argued that the confessional shifts the configuration of power, but that getting a
secret out into the open is not inherently liberating. This argument was directed
against what he called the repressive hypothesis, that the truth about sex has been
hidden from the self by a repressive culture which has silenced talk about sex. In fact,
he showed, during the Victorian era, there was a veritable explosion of discourse
classifying and regulating sexuality.
1 want to suggest that this mathematics classroom had an echo of the
Christian ritual of confession. In the error analysis assignment, the students were told
to confess their mathematical ‘sins’, so to speak. Confession even led to redemption;
the confessors’ test marks were raised — by an arcane formula, T t t ^ (50 - 1),
which concretely embodied the authority of teacher and TA. The assignment requested
"writing out" a correct solution, akin perhaps to demanding a public recantation. Most
importantly, the confession placed knowledge about the student in the context of the
knowing subject’s relationship with their judge, the TA.
The confession is a ritual of di. urse in which the speaking subject is also the
subject of the statement; it is also a ritual that unfolds within a power
relationship, for one does not confess without the presence (or virtual presence)
of a partner who is not simply the interlocutor but the authority ’'ho requires the
confession, prescribes and appreciates it, and intervenes in order to judge,
punish, forgive, console and reconcile (Foucault 1990, 61-62).
Students understood that they were presenting themselves to a person in a
position of authority, in particular, someone who would decide their final grades, and
therefore production of ‘truth’ in these accounts required either trust or coercion. But

165
even so, the impressions were generally managed so as not to be self-incriminating.
The point of the exercise was, at one level anyhow, to produce redeemable selves.
The explanations can be read as students’ putting themselves in the best light possible.
In explaining why they had gone wrong, for example, no one wrote, "1 was too tired
to think straight because I stayed up late playing video games." No one wrote, "I
don’t have a clue what’s going on in this course ’cause I haven’t been doing any work
in it." From my experience as an undergraduate mathematics student, either of these
statements would — in the context of talking among friends — be considered adequate
ways of accounting for a low grade on a test3; however, here the subject positions of
student and professor were markedly unequal — despite Joan’s anti-authoritarianism.
In my analysis, I found these young adults ascribed their errors in ways
similar to previous research (Bar-Tai 1978) "where it is generally argued that boys
tend to attribute their success to internal, stable causes (ability) and their failures to
external, unstable causes (lack of effort), whereas girls tend to reverse this pattern,
taking personal responsibility for their failures, but not for their successes"
(Walkerdine et al 1989, 10). 1 noticed that in all my examples of "performance"
where the students had defended their cognitive ability by presenting mitigating factors
such as carelessness or forgetfulness, the students had been male. Looking at female
students’ work, 1 found more hesitancy and more willingness to admit lack of
' Unsurprisingly, after the course was over, one student told me that he really hadn’t
done very much work in it

166
understanding. This was not universal by any means, but the trend was clear.
For example, Carol’s #4A was hesitant and contradictory :
. . . I’m not sure if it is

right but logically thinking, each step makes sense and
I am confident that it is right.
Michele said, "I was in such a rush," on so many questions in her error explanation,
that when 1 looked up her grade on the test, 1 was shocked to lind she had been in the
top half of the class. In contrast, Steve’s error explanation of #2 situated himself as
competent by making an authoritative declaration, which was incorrect.
In line 2 of this question 1 thought

you could do any operation as long as you did
it to both sides. This is false because
the function it undergoes has to be 1-1.
In line 3 1 was confused by the previous
questions and didn’t use clear thinking.
This pretty much follows for the rest of
this question (emphasis added).
Many students situated their lack of competence in the past, and presented
themselves as free from doubt in the present. It was acceptable for Vincent to have
said on one question about his problems at the time of the test,
The reason for my mistake on the test are

simple — I guessed. I really didn’t know how to
prove the lines where 1 made my mistakes.6
6 Note the format of some of these assignment solutions: Vincent, Simon and several
other students right-justified hand written material by leaving blank spaces between
words. To be able to judge the spacing correctly, they clearly had to have copied their
solutions from nearly final drafts. Through the influence of computer technology, the
socially constructed standard of what counts as neatness on mathematics assignments has
altered since 1 was an undergraduate.

167
However, al the time of the error explanations, though some students were
undoubtedly guessing, no one said so. Everyone found some explanation. Consider,
for example, a baffling citation o f P6 where the correct axiom was P2 (Julia’s #1A);
since both P2 and P6 were about identity elements, zero and one respectively, Julia
might have mistaken multiplication for addition. She could have written, "I don’t
know why 1 wrote P6. It doesn’t seem to make any sense." But her actual error
explanation was more authoritative, if not very illuminating, "P6 is not the proper
axiom used here, it is P2."
In the discourse of mathematics, especially pure mathematics, there is a
distinction between understanding and memorization. Creativity is valued, as is clear,
analytic thinking. Thus I found students attributing their errors to other factors, rather
than cast aspersions on their own intelligence7. Thus for example, above, Steve was
"confused by the previous questions": his phrasing places the fault externally.
Phil’s error explanation for question #1B was as follows:
My mistake was due to unclear thinking or more like a bad memory. Because 1
had done this proof on my own before the test but when the time came 1
couldn’t remember how to start it off. This memory lapse sometimes happens to
me on test because of pressure and determination to do well.
Phil first fit his explanation into a category suggested by the professor, "unclear
7 Here on the one hand I would point out that all these students were indeed very
bright, attd were justified in not considering themselves incapable of understanding the
work. On the other hand, 1 would like to avoid reproducing a certain discourse of
intelligence (see Gould 1981). That is the trouble with discourses; they create a double
bind, wherein one cannot simply choose to ignore them; always, interpretation is
influenced in some way by a set of pre -existing meanings.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n p roh ibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

168
thinking," but then amended it to a term that he found more fitting, "bad memory."
Joan had proposed categories that named flawed actions, and carefully refrained from
evaluating the person — in the metaphor of Christianity, judging the sin and not the
sinner. However, Phil shifted the focus to what seemed at first to be a personal
weakness, bad memory. 1 initially interpreted this as a (possibly pre-emptive) self-
deprecating move, from judgement of an act, an unclear thought, to judgement of
himself, a person with a "bad memory"; however, 1 find it more plausible that he was
actually making a defensive move*, for it is less threatening to attribute Hawed
memory to oneself than to attribute flawed thinking.
Brian too was concerned with managing the impression he created.
I neglected/forgot to account for the fact that (\/F -W o) is positive. Perhaps, 1

rushed through it carelessly (#2).
The message I draw from this is that Brian was saying he was capable of writing his
answer correctly, and would have done so if he been more careful. Contrast this
answer with how students might explain their errors in a class taught by a stern
disciplinarian. There, students might go so far as to feign incomprehension rather than
be chastised for carelessness.
* 1 am indebted to Kate Krug for the latter interpretation.

169
l;ig n r c 8 . S im o n ’s te s t s o lu t io n a n d e r r o r e x p la n a t io n
Simon’s test solution for 01C
PROVE: (a b e P A aeP ) ~ b fP
Let x represent a- b. x e P
a-b - x
a '1 a b - cf' x Mult both sides by a'1. (Equals times equals...)
I • b a~‘ ‘ X P7 Mult Inverse,
b ~ a 1' x
■ b <r P since a 'eP and x eP and by P,2

Q.E.D.
Simon’s error explanation
/ don V think there is anything wrong with this

solution. W e cannot directly use Pn since it
specifies ( a e P & b e P ) - a - b e P , but
the question uses the converse & gives aeP.
by the LOGICAL, AND , it can be seen that
bf P. Oh well, that wasn't what I did,
anyway.
/ reduced the problem to the form

b - c d , but had shown that c e P &
d e P & c d e P * <£ since b = c • d,
beP . L - > by Pn
Perhaphs this was not stated as explicitly
as you required, and so in a model so l!,
I would not add any additional info, but
restate it clearer.
After conferring with several other Students, /

decided to use p roof by contradiction, rather
ti
UeU UXn'k
HS » * 'e f
R eproduced with perm ission of th e copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without perm ission.
170
1 found among the twelve error analyses, of up to 7 questions each, only a
single question where a student argued that his original answer had been correct. 1 can
read this as an example of resistance to power, though not a very successful one, for
reasons I explain below.
What makes it resistance is that he ‘talked back’ instead of accepting the
word of the person in authority, who after all might have made a mistake. But at the
same time, Simon legitimated the authority of Joan to judge his work, for instance by
acknowledging what she "required." An alternative approach would have been
somehow to deny that she was competent to judge what lie had done. Here his answer
conformed to the expectation of an answer organized in a particular way.
Reading Simon’s statement, "Perhaphs |sic| this was not stated as explicitly
as you required," 1 found his underlining of "perhaphs" was defensive in tone. 1
suggest Simon was offering an explanation of what might have accounted for a
marker’s decision to penalize him, but would not admit to anything that might be used
against him.
Since he did not see the error he had made, and therefore he could see
nothing objectively wrong with the answer, he had to produce an account of it as
subjectively wrong, i.e., that his answer was ‘all there’ but not ‘right enough’ because
of not being clear enough.
In effect, I believe, he was using the error analysis assignment to appeal his
grade. As I have suggested, the power dynamics of this assignment are somewhat

171
problematic; however, I find this case actually a somewhat positive one, in that to
some degree a student challenged the received positions of student and teacher. In a
way, the error analysis might simply have been an opportunity for conflicts like this to
be expressed.
Finally, I have a prime example of power from below. Julia was quite hard
on herself in #3.
I began my proof with something that

I know is not true. For instance \a\ + \b\* a2 + b2
I also do not know that d + la tf+ b 2 < a*+b2 is
true. 1 Then continued to make statements
which were incorrect, gx \a\J>-2ab+ \b\ - d + b\
This is obviously wrong. This illogical train
of thought was carried out through my
entire proof. At the time 1 knew in my
mind what 1 wanted to put down on
paper, 1 just didn’t know how to write
my ideas down.
Self-discipline here was harsher than any external discipline would likely be. Julia
produced a torrent of self-criticism which few others would think of saying to her
face. She got a grade of 3 out of 15 on this question; surely that was enough o f a
message about the quality of her test solution. What marker/grader would — to use an
ugly metaphor — continue to flog this dead horse? But Julia herself was the critic,
and she showed mercy only in the final sentence, where she claimed understanding at
some untranslatable mental level,
Here is the ‘moral imperative’ of mathematical objectivity at work. For one
could truthfully respond that Julia’s train of thought m s illogical, the statement m s

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obviously wrong. It is this power of mathematics which 1 find alarming. Like a form
of religious fundamentalism, it can justify all manner of hcartlessness in the name of
safeguarding Truth. That is to me the greatest significance o f seeing mathematics as
process, that its hold on people’s moral faculties may be broken.
In the previous chapter, I proposed that interpretation was necessary and
desirable. Here I wish to problematize that somewhat by noting Foucault’s argument
that vis-a-vis confession, interpretation was what enabled its transfer into the domain
of scientific discourse.
The truth. . . could only reach completion in the one who assimilated and
recorded it. It was the latter’s function to verify this obscure truth: the revelation
of confession had to be coupled with the decipherment of what it said. The one
who listened was not simply the forgiving master, the judge who condemned or
acquitted; he was the master of truth (Foucault 1990, 66-67).
It is ironic that an assignment intended to be liberating and non-cocrcivc
might turn out to enmesh students in power relations of which mathematics is usually
free.
In this chapter then, I have shown how the objectivity of standards of
mathematical error is both recognized and, through that recognition, locally
reproduced. I also have shown the use of a more situated mode of writing about
mathematics, which may expand the bounds of mathematics or solidify the notion th.n
truth is objective while error is subjective. And finally, the complex social relatit ns

173
revealed by the more personal style o f writing shows how intimate are the links
between mathematical knowledge and the production of themselves as ‘good math
students’. Students used gendered meanings of ability, understanding, memory,
carelessness in the stories they told about themselves as mathematicians.
This brings Part Two of the thesis to a close. It is now time to make the links
between the pieces of the thesis.

PART THREE
CONNECTING

CHAPTER 8
C O N C L U S IO N
O nly partial p ersp ectiv e prom ises objective vision. . . F em inist objectivity is
about lim ited location and situated know ledge, not about transcend ence and
splitting o f su b ject and object.
D onna Haraway, "S ituated K now ledges"
M uch o f w hat w e are doing is a question o f changing the style o f thinking.

L u dw ig W ittgenstein, L ectures and C onversations on A esthetics
In this thesis, I have described the actual organization o f several concrete
m anV m atical texts taken from an actual classroom , in order to clarify the nature o f
u a th u n a tie al practice in education. M y m ain project here has been to lead from an
alternative way o f seeing m athem atics to a critique of m athem atics education. I have
been tryn; - to dem y stify m athem atics by taking it back from the su blim e into the
realm o f the social, and hence to call for m ore dialogical ways o f com m unicating
m athem atically in education.
In this final ch ap ter, I will attem pt to connect the m ajor th em es o f this thesis.
T h ere is, how ever, no G o d ’s-eye view (H araw ay 1991); my perspective here is a
partial one, like W ittg e n ste in ’s "m otley" of m athem atical language-gam es, instead of
R ussell and W h iteh ead ’s totalizing dream o f a com plete and con sistent m athem atical
system . The ‘u n ify in g ’ co n cep t here is itself a fragm ented one, nam ely actual practice
175

17b
in all its endless variety.
I wish to develop three main ideas in this conclusion: 1) m athem atical texts
are used to play language-gam es, not only to convey mots about m athem atical entities;
2) the objectivity of mathematics is fundam entally an accom plishm ent o f people’s
m aterial practice; and 3) letting go of authoritarian relations in m athem atics education
requires considering both mathematics and pow er as processes.
In section 8.1, I recapitulate the argum ent I have developed in Parts One and
T w o of the thesis. In sections 8.2 through 8.4, I flesh out the three points above, and
in section 8.5, I draw the project to a close.
8.1 Sum m ary
In Part O ne, I positioned the theory, phenomena and m yself. In chapter 2, 1
explained som e of the basic theoretical apparatus permeating m y w ork. W ittgenstein’s
philosophy o f m athem atics and language denied the need for conceptual interm ediaries
to explain our know ledge, instead m aking custom ary practice, o r what he term ed
"form s of life" (G ier 1981), the ground for our certainty. 1 adopted ethnom ethodolo-
g y ’s fascination w ith the ordinary details of*how it is that things are recognizable and
know able as w hat they really are, its desire to operationalize studies w hich do not
m ake the phenom ena in question disappear, and Livingston’s concept of the pair
structure in m athem atical proving.
I then introduced a tension which runs throughout the thesis, betw een S m ith ’s

177
argument that social power operates only through human agency, and the
poststructuralist emphasis on discourses which transcend individual agency — and
indeed which arguably produce the ‘individual’ human subject. 1 described how
language and power are intimately and problematically related, in a way which may
be seen as a pessimistic view o f how successful reforms can ever be, but I also wanted
to hold onto the notion that there is always resistance to the effects of power. These
theorists shared a concern with the centrality o f language in the production of the
meaning.
In chapter 3, I introduced the class where my textual data originated, and
presented ideas from the social constructivist approach to mathematics education,
which guided the class. Through an interview with a student and quotations from the
lessons, I showed how anti-authoritarianism, multiplicity, process-orieritation,
fallibitism, communication as a "way o f knowing," and opposition to
transcendentalism, were all part of the philosophy of mathematics and education which
the professor practised in Math 120.1 discussed the relationship between social
constructivism and leftist humanism. I argued there was a tension between the
constructivist philosophy of mathematics explicitly discussed and the formalist
philosophy embedded in the problems that were chosen for study. I also described
how 1 collected and organized the textual data analyzed in Part 'Two, introducing the
important theme of making visible my own research practices.
In Part Two, 1 analyzed proofs from a variety of different contexts. Some of

178
these proofs were of propositions closely related to one another, making their diversity
all the more striking. I was concerned with showing the integrity of each proof on its
own terms, as products of intentional action, and argued that no transcendental ideal
proof was needed to explain how these proofs came to be.
Thus, in chapter 4, I began this interrogation of proofs by illustrating a way
of seeing a textbook mathematical proof as the outcome o f productive work by
mathematicians. 1 argued that the purpose o f the proof was not simply to represent
structural relationships among mathematical objects existing transcendentally, but to
persuade and to explain. 1 showed multiple ways of reading mathematical texts, as an
attempt to disrupt the reading of this proof as a ‘natural history’ of mathematical
objects. My point was that mathematical statements mediate mathematical reality and
construct its objective presence, rather than simply reflecting that mathematical reality.
I also used the problem of mathematical textbooks to illustrate two contrasting models
of power: in the first, power being controlled from above by author and professor,
and in the second, Foucault’s power from below as a process in which the students’
negotiation of meaning is central to its effectiveness.
In chapter 5 ,1 used a comparison of the board-work proof with the textbook
proof to show once again how a proof embodied taken-for-granted work. 1 suggested
that the transcendental model of the ideal proof did not do justice to the complexities
found in the actual lived work of developing this proof. As well, using a reflexive
description of how 1 had constructed the figure, I problematized how these phenomena

179
of the class became knowable here in this thesis. Again 1 wanted this to reflect my
desire to avoid reifying the products of my practices of inquiry.
In chapter 6, 1 took up a humanist critique of traditional mathematical
teaching, using the examples o f the teaching assistant’s responses to assignment
solutions by two students, Brian and Mona. 1 demonstrated that the TA had relied
upon models of perfect mathematical truth, which reinscribed a number of hierarchical
power relations. Perfection was held up as a standard, the personal involvement of
students in their products was not acknowledged, and even the "instrumental" (Giroux
1983) goals o f ‘conveying’ a technique of proving could have been better served by a
more interpretive approach by the teaching assistant. In contrast to this pedagogical
approach, I recommended that students’ mathematical writings be read as contributions
to a dialogue between them and the TA or teacher, rather than as representations of
mathematical reality. A dialogue would be in keeping with the course’s constructivist
orientation, in particular, the concepts of fallibilism and process-orientation.
In chapter 7, I then brought in elements of a poststructuralist perspective to
problematize the constructivist and humanist idea, offered in chapter 6, that dialogue
could solve the problems o f interpersonal interaction.
The error analysis assignment created new opportunities for students to reflect
upon their previous work in an interpretive way, in that the assignment played with
the boundaries of technical mathematics. However, students were drawn into an
antisymmetric view in which situated practice explained error and transcendental truth

180
explained perfect answers (c.f. Bloor 1976). It created opportunities for more situated
practice of mathematical writing than in the timeless, actor-less style of most
assignment solutions. At the same time, it imported a confessional dynamic, bringing
into play a history of power relations which saturates certain ‘ways of knowing’ which
are privileged throughout post-Christendom.
Using ethnomethodology and Dorothy Smith’s work to analyze how the
production of objectivity was organized through the assignment, I framed the
production of mathematical objectivity as accomplished through practice. Through
producing mathematical knowledge, students simultaneously produced themselves as
mathematicians — and as gendered subjects, these students’ relationships to
mathematical truth and error were intimately related to the mobilization of power.
The implication of this final case study is that the recovery o f mathematics
into the realm of the social creates two poles of a contradiction. On the one hand,
many people find a humanistic mathematics more approachable, and on the other, the
broadening o f the bounds of what constitutes legitimate mathematical discourse may
entangle people in new forms o f control.
8,2 Language-games
In this section, 1 amplify the first o f the three themes advanced at the
beginning of this chapter: mathematical texts as language-games.
Pimm (1987, 207) asked, "What would a theory o f mathematical literary

181
criticism look like?" In this thesis, I have taken up his challenge and perform ed
literary readings o f several m athem atical texts. T he point o f the m u ltip le readings in
chapter 4 w as to break aw ay from the realist-factu al approach to reading, and see a
new depth of m eaning in these texts.
Many w riters (e.g., Perlman 1982, B urton 1988) have a rg u ed that students’
difficulties in m athem atics arise from th e ir m anipulation of m ath em atical sym bols at a
purely syntactic level, i.e., students failure to see the sem antic c o n te n t o f the text. 1
argue one step further, that while the sem an tics of m athem atical sym bols may be
clearly understood, there may be inadequate appreciation o f the pragm atic content o f
m athem atical text, in o th er words, of th e fa c t that professors, teach in g assistants,
students and others are using m athem atical sym bols to do thing s. F o r exam ple, a 2 ju st
outside the left m argin at the top of a p age, i.e. a question n u m b er, does not m ean the
sam e as a 2 in the body o f a solution, n o r as the 2 of the grade fo r the solution. A s
well, as 1 show ed in ch apter 5, som etim es Vx+2 can really m ean V x f 1, when the
context indicates that a slip of the pen has been made.
But there is a deeper sense in w hich m eaning extends b ey o n d the sem antics.
For instance, in figure 7, though there is hardly a word of E n glish am ong the
idiographs in C arol’s revised solution, I can read her tertiary p ro o f to say, "1 got zero
on this question on the test and I ’m really g oing to make sure I d o n ’t leave anything
out this time." O f course, in my interpretation, I may be w rong. B ut Carol and 1 will
be able to repair m y interpretation, if a dialo gue exists betw een us.

182
It is a routine part of communication for people to misunderstand remarks in
plain English, yet it is also routine for them to repair the confusion and carry on.
When a crude model of meaning misleads someone, however, as to what their
interlocutor is really communicating, then they are left unprepared to fix the
misunderstanding. They miss the point. Perhaps they recognize vaguely that something
is amiss but can’t place what it is. Here then is the value of seeing mathematical texts
as languagc-games: the language-game model reminds readers that they can read
between the lines.
Meaning is therefore crucial in mathematics, and throughout the thesis I have
tried to draw attention to how meaning in mathematics takes a material form. There is
a tendency for both mathematicians and lay-people to see mathematics as an
expression of disembodied mind; however, I have shown something of the importance
of books, chalk-board, notepads, acetate, pens, photocopiers, hands, computers,
language, symbols. 1 argue that mathematics is not in the ether, but it is embodied in
tools as they are used in practice, it is m "forms of life."
As Livingston (1987, 132) argued, the lived*work of proving is very much
tied to its material details. In a slightly different vein, Kaput (1991), as a way of
advocating curricular changes to match the knowledge base associated with computer
technology, told a fantasy about the transformative effects of the introduction of
writing ittto the mathematics classrooms of an oral culture. To draw a small link

183
betw een m y research and environm ental studies narrowly defined, I suggest im agining
a m athem atics classroom w ithout any paper; there the possibility o f carrying on the
usual activities o f m athem atics seem s slight.
T urnin g then to the actual classroom of this study, I have em phasized the
im portance o f d ialo g u e in m athem atical com m unication, i.e., o f interpretation w hich
recognizes the intentionality of talk and w riting, even — or especially — in the case
o f highly technical m aterial. Tow ards that aim , in my view, Jo a n ’s structuring of the
course around collaborative learning experiences should be strongly encouraged.
Finally, I recall the passage I quoted in chapter 1 (A nderson, Hughes and
Sharrock 1984, 382), which said W ittgenstein’s work would not affect the use of o u r
m athem atics, th at w e will still calculate the same way after this m ysterious
superstitious pu zzlem ent has been cleared up. I agree, and y et I feel there is m ore to it
than that. F o r one o f my points has been that there is more to the doing of
m athem atics than the sem antics of the sym bols, that the technical w ork is a
perform ance w hich carries certain baggage with it. So yes, Vx+T is still 2, but
som ehow it d oes not m ean the sam e to m e any more, 'litis m athem atical proposition
will alw ays be bound up with m em ories o f late nights at the co m p u ter w orking on this
thesis.
T o take a m ore political exam ple, a recent A ustralian m ed ia cam paign told
girls that taking m athem atics increased their choices by 400% . A s Sue W illis said,
"The cam paign itse lf provided an exam ple o f the use of m athem atics to distort,

184
intimidate and mystify" (1992, 12). I suggest that seeing mathematics as process,
seeing that 400% figure as having been produced by someone, lessens the compelling
force of this use of mathematics to mystify, and that brings me to the next section.
8.3 Objectivity as practice
Having provided what Livingston (1986) called "real-worldly access" to the
practices o f proving, I am now in a position to discuss some implications of the pair-
structure concept of mathematical proof.
First, the question of mathematical objectivity — or ‘rigor’, as
mathematicians call it — is interpreted as a question of social order, i.e., of
accounting for the regularity o f mathematicians’ work, and its answer is found in
social practice.
What is summarily spoken of as "mathematical rigor" actually consists o f the

local, endogenous work o f producing and exhibiting, by, for, and among
mathematicians, naturally accountable mathematics (Livingston 1983, xi).
It is through the lived-work of proving that a proof-account, like those in the figures
in this thesis, is recognized as adequate. Thus the pair-structure provides an answer to
the puzzle o f the objectivity o f mathematical knowledge. It grounds the objectivity,
the ‘out-thereness’, o f mathematical statements not in an alternate universe but in
actual practice, in material life.
In chapter 6, for instance, 1 showed there was a standard forjudging Mona’s
work, which was not arbitrary but was based on the accepted ways of doing

185
mathematics in the class. And in chapter 7, 1 showed the students recognizing what
was right and wrong about their test solutions, through their work of writing the error
explanations. My point is that the social reality of the standards of mathematics was
‘ongoingly’ produced, not just by the professor, but by the students as they organized
their work around these standards.
Once recognized as conventional, such standards may perhaps be arranged
differently. For a slightly trivial example, Pat Rogers once told me about her abstract
algebra course (described in Rogers 1992) where she and the students decided to let
"commutative" mean "associative" and vice versa (recall appendix 1), since most of
them had been using the words that way anyhow. In that class the rules of
mathematical notation were produced differently, as they can be in any class.
Second, the pair-structure provides an ethnomethodological vision of what it
means for mathematics to be social.
One o f the consequences o f the discovered pair structure o f proofs is that the
proofs of mathematics are recovered as witnessably social objects. This is not
because some type o f extraneous, non-proof-specific element like a theory of
'socialization’ needs to be added to the proof, but because the natural
accountability o f a proof is integrally tied to its production and exhibition as a
proof (Livingston 1987, 126).
Now ethnomethodology itself is not concerned with pursuing any kind of critique of
mathematical practice; however, Smith’s approach, influenced by ethnomethodology,
would enable an examination of, for example, how gender is produced in the course
of mathematical talk in a classroom, pursuing some leads 1 hinted at in chapter 7. The

186
organization o f practice w ould be explicated in detail and m ade available as a basis for
critical strategic analysis.
A third point, closely related to the second, is that the analysis can reveal the
shop-w ork skills and bring the proof-account to life.
P ro v ers’ situated w ork practices — the local articulation o f a proof-account

as a description o f its ow n lived-w ork — provide unique access to the objects
o f m athem atics. . . . Therein, w e have begun to rediscover proofs as the
vibrant, living things that they are for the local production cohorts o f provers
w ho d isco ver and shape them (L ivingston 1987, 112, em p hasis added).
T h e claim that m athem atics is socially constructed is one to w hich I think m any
progressive people are sym pathetic but w hich they may have tro uble picturing on the
basis o f the accounts o f scholars like B loor and Ernest. H ere I have dem onstrated how
to actually experience this claim ’s m eaning in concrete terms.
In chapter 3 , 1 quoted E rnest’s three characteristics o f social constructivist
philosophy o f m athem atics, all o f w hich I can assent to. I repeat these here:
(i) T he basis o f m athem atical know ledge is linguistic know ledge, conventions
and rules, and language is a social construction.
(ii) Interpersonal social processes are required to turn an in d iv id u al’s
subjective m athem atical know ledge, after publication, into accepted objective
m athem atical know ledge.
(iii) O bjectivity itself w ill be understood to be social (E rnest 1991, 42).
1 see our accounts as com plem entary: m ine fills out an em pirical program alongside
his philosophical program . I am supplying a piece of the transition from subjective to
objective know ledge.
O bjective kno w led ge o f m athem atics is continually recreated and renew ed by

the grow th o f subjective know ledge o f m athem atics, in the m inds o f countless
187
individuals. This provides the substratum w hich supports objective know ledge,
fo r it is through subjective representations that the social, the rules and
conventions o f language and hum an interaction, is sustained. T hese m utually
observed rules, in their turn, legitim ate certain form ulations o f m athem atics as
accepted objective m athem atical know ledge (E rnest 1991, 82).
T here are a num ber o f pedagogical im plications o f understanding m athem atics
as process, as follow s. I strongly support the constructivist educational approach o f
em phasizing the process o f doing m athem atics; an ethnom ethodologically-inspired
description can provide a sense o f how that process really w orks. A nd in keeping w ith
m y general position that w hen know ledge is to be disengaged from its origins, one
should strive to be conscious and deliberate about this disengagem ent, 1 recom m end
that m athem atical know ledge b e historicized in the classroom to a greater degree than
is now com m on (see G rabiner 1983; Pim m 1981). Finally, think de-reifying
m athem atics can undo som e o f the dam age o f the ‘m oral im perative’ associated w ith
m athem atical truth, as 1 describe in the next section.
M any m onths after the course w as over, 1 phoned Sim on to get som e
inform ation about one o f his assignm ents. H e read the expression -(ab)eP as "negative
a b is part o f P ," and w ithout even being aw are o f w hat 1 w as doing, 1 replied using
the conventional term inology, "negative a b is an elem ent o f P ," rather than follow ing
his usage, w hereupon he prom ptly apologized for not rem em bering the ‘p ro p er’ w ay
o f reading the expression. T his is a sm all sign o f the pow er that ‘out-there’

188
m athem atics exerts. There is a standard, but it has becom e m ystified. S tanding outside
o f us, m athem atics is experienced as a moral im perative to know the truth.
A sim ilar exam ple of the pow er of this m oral im perative occurred y e a rs ago
w hen I w as m arking a stack of calculus assignm ents. I cam e across a p ap er w h ere a

4
student had w ritten som ething like j -1 w as a n 8ry> genuinely angry. "N o! Y ou
c a n ’t do that!" H ow dare he be so clueless!
For m e, this thesis has clarified my personal experiences as m ath stu d en t and
as teaching assistant, but it has also affected others. Perhaps the aspect o f m y research
1 have found m ost exciting has been the liberating influence o f this thesis on so m e o f
the people w ho have helped me to refine its num erous drafts. Several frien d s w ho
have feared m athem atics since high school o r earlier have told me they have co m e to
sec m athem atics in a new light, and it no longer seem s threatening. T h ey h ave
expressed the w ish that they had been taught m athem atics by som eone like Jo an . Y et
despite Jo an ’s liberatory approach to teaching, she m ay not have overcom e the
com plex w ebs o f pow er that pervade the discourse o f m athem atics education.
Foucault m ade it clear that transform ative social action is never so sim p le as
inverting a given set of categories. Here I w ish to argue that "pow er from b elo w " has
been underem phasized by critical scholars in m athem atics education, and that
F o u cau lt’s work can help us appreciate the im portance of self-disciplining techno logies
in the operation o f power.
What 1 wish to argue here is that Joan’s anti-authoritarianism could be only

partially successful because of the expectations students brought to the course, about
w hat it m eant to be a "good m ath student." They were in m any cases very com m itted
to self-disciplining. In the one m inute-papers, Joan received suggestions like the
follow ing:
M aybe at the beginning or end o f class, have people go to the board and
answ er im prom ptu questions to see if they actually understand the concepts
(1M P.4).
A ssign questions from the exercises that you w ant us to do. It helps m e know
w hat you expect us to know (1M P.16).
And o n e stud en t liked the fact that
Y ou challenge us to think our ow n and work things ou t which is frustrating

but interesting. It builds character.
This show s the production of the m athem atical self, and the difficulties for a professor
like Joan, w ho w as trying to encourage an alternative approach. For exam ple, the error
analysis assignm ent, w hile attem pting to incorporate dialogue into the process o f
m athem atics education, reinscribed for m any students the self-disciplining approach as
exem plified by the confessional. I do not, how ever, wish my reservations about the
confessional dynam ic to be taken as recom m ending against the use and refinem ent of
the erro r analysis assignm ent. I believe there are ways of organizing it differently to
reduce such problem s.
T h ere is grow ing interest in th e use o f narrative writing in m athem atics
education (e.g., S terrett 1990). I find the journalling work which teachers like fiuerk,
Pow ell and Frankenstein are having th eir students do is exciting and very worth

190
em ulating; however, I wish to sound a note of caution: simply that any "technology of
the se lf' which touches so deeply people’s sense of who they are, may have
unintended consequences. In Foucault’s memorably convoluted words,
People know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do;
but what they d o n ’t know is what w hat they do does (personal
communication quoted in Dreyfus and Rabinow 1983, 187).
I think this thesis shows there are com plexities of power involved in every variety o f
m athematical writing in a class, whether that be austerely technical, m ore narrative
like the error analysis, or explicitly em otive like the stories told in Buerk (1985),
Bucrk and Szablewski (forthcoming), and W ebber (1990).
M athematics has sometimes been compared to a priesthood into which
students are inducted. For example, one w om an’s reflection on her experience with
mathem atics related it to a secret form of knowledge.
Religious instruction, like maths, was filled with ‘givens’ and to question
them was ‘brazen, uppity’.... Like the catechism she learned her m aths ‘by
heart’. Like the Latin mass, maths was a secret language im bued with power,
and which could only be understood by certain chosen initiates. M aths too
was ancient wisdom that one could not question, could not presum e to
understand (W ebber 1990, summarized by Willis 1992).
This secret language parallels one of the two forms of know ledge Foucault com pared
in History of Sexuality (1978), ars erotica, the erotic arts — the other being the
confession, which Foucault described as "a form of know ledge-pow er strictly opposed
to the art of initiations and the masterful secret" (Foucault 1990, 58).
1 pose as a question what the significance might be o f the use of confessional
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m is s io n of t h e cop y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

19]
"technologies of the self" by groups m arginalized from m athem atics. For it is surely
no accident to find titles such as "The voices o f women m aking m eaning in
m athem atics" (B uerk 1985). Pow ell and Lopez. (1989) described the use o f writing on
m athem atics in an ex perim ental course w hose students had been victim ized by racial,
gender and class oppressions. W here the "initiation" model of teaching m athem atics
has excluded m any p eo p le, tools o f self-exam ination through w riting have been
proposed as a d em o cratizin g rem edy. T his is not in itself bad, but it should be
recognized that the effects o f pow er are reconfigured, not elim inated, through such
experim ents.
Expanding th e rang e o f language accep tab le within the ‘d isc ip lin e ’ of
m athem atics m ay be good , in that people fin d it constraining to talk in a totally
im personal m ode, yet it open s up new challeng es as well.
In 1983, F o u cau lt told an interview er,
M y point is not th at everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous,

w hich is not ex actly the sam e thing as bad. If everything is dangerous, then
we alw ays have som ething to do. So m y position leads not to apathy but to a
hyper- and pessim istic activism (in D reyfus and Rabinow 1983, 231-232).
8.5 In closing
This project c o u ld be extended in several directions. T he kind o f research I
w ould propose for so m eo n e to pursue in the spirit of this thesis w ould be defined less
by the subject m atter than by the m ethod. T h e key is to look to how practices are
organized, w hether th ese b e practices o f talk in g shop with o n e’s classm ates, teaching a

192
m athem atics lesson, taking notes on a lesson, or setting curricular requirem ents in a
departm ental m eeting.
I m ention m athem atical talk in the above list because — though it w as largely
beyond the scope of th is particular project — it was for me, as m y forew ord
suggested, an integral elem ent o f the experience of becom ing a m athem atician. And to
understand w hat m akes a m athem atician a m athem atician w ould be a key elem ent in
building strategies to address the problem s o f equity in the discipline.
T his thesis m ay legitim ately read as som ew hat pessim istic about die
possibilities for ch an g e in m athem atics education. T hroughout the w orld, pow er and
know ledge operate to g eth er as inseparable duals, and m adiem atical know ledge is
h ard ly different from oUicr know ledge in this respect — indeed I believe dial
m athem atics is tied to the production o f the W estern rational subject in w ays that 1
have barely hinted at in this thesis. I hope this thesis has m ade it clear that nothing in
m athem atics is necessarily innocent; diere are always resonances and m eanings beyond
the sem antics of the x 's and y's. S o I do not think there are any easy answ ers to the
problem s around us. Y et I can also see "cracks in consciousness" em erging, for
exam ple, from the constructivist m ovem ent in m athem atics education. It is in the sense
o f this resistance that a political critique of the practice o f m athem atical education can
c a tty forw ard.
I speculate th at reification of m athem atical know ledge both 1) produces
hierarchical relations betw een those w ho possess more and less o f this thing called

193
know ledge and 2) is itse lf produced th ro u g h authoritarian relations. 1 have pointed to
som e o f the im p licatio n s o f seeing m ath em atics as practice; the philosophical
dem ystification, the o p en in g of m athem atical knowledge to critique, the "partial
perspectives" rep lacin g m onolithic au th o rity , and the instrumental benefits in improved
com m unication in the classroom .
In the B lu e an d B row n B ooks (1960), W ittgenstein com pared his work to the
task o f taking b ook s w hich w ere strew n ab out the floor of a library, and putting them
onto their proper shelves. It was an ach iev em en t simply to place tw o books together
w hich belong on the sam e shelf, even if th e group as a whole ultim ately had to be
relocated. W ittgenstein w rote,
But som e o f th e greatest ach iev em en ts in philosophy could only be com pared
with taking up so m e books w hich seem ed to belong together, and putting
them on d ifferen t shelves, nothing m ore being final about their positions than
that they no lo n g e r lie side by side.
A s I have struggled to construct order fro m chaos in the writing o f this thesis, this
im age has struck m e in tw o ways: the first sim ply in the m aterial placem ent of two
paragraphs tog eth er w h ich had been sep arated , that new contexts generated a synthesis
o f m eaning; and seco n d , that the project is bringing together books which have not
been placed tog ether before. I like to th in k that the political critique o f the status of
m athem atical k n o w led g e, found in B loor an d Ernest, and the attention to the Tine
detail o f actual liv ed m athem atical p ractice, found in Livingston, are fruitfully
com bined here. W a lk e rd in e ’s poststru cturalist work, particularly on gender and

194
m athem atics education, has taken F oucault in provocative directions, but S m ith ’s w ork
on the social organization of know ledge has not previously been used to look at
m athem atics education nor at m athem atical w riting m ore generally. Finally, I think by
focusing on the issue o f reifying the practice of abstract m athem atics rather than on
the issue o f abstracting from the real w orld, I am taking the critiqu e o f m athem atics
education in a new direction. T hese are fresh com binations and fresh distinctions. As
W ittgenstein w rote, all we are doing in our investigations is to perform the
clarification of separating and juxtaposin g a few books, and yet that is sufficient.

Appendix 1. Handout on axioms for the real number system.
H O W TO BEG IN
M athem atics is, am ong o th er things, a glorious g a m e , in which one often solves problems,
or proves sta te m en ts, sta rtin g from certain a s s u m p t i o n s .
W h a t ARE the assum ption s in this course??

W h at do we assum e we already know?
O N E purpose of this su pplem en t is to answer this question. (Hut it would bo impossible

to answ er the question COMPLETELY.) Another purpose is to point out that
m ost of w hat we know from ‘procalculus m ath em atics’

c a n b e lo g ic a l ly d e d u c e d
from a fairly sh o rt list o f ‘axiom s'.
(An axiom is som ething we ju s t agree to believe at the beginning; we don't try to d e d u c e
it from som ething else.)
We will b e l i s t i n g m a n y c o n s e q u e n c e s of o u r a x iom s, b u t
t h e m a i n p o i n t h e r e is NOT t o list f a c t s
( a l t h o u g h all t h e s e f a c t s s h o u l d b e EXTREMELY f a m i l ia r t o everyo ne).
T he point is th a t, having accepted a few facts (12 or so), we d o n o t ha v e t o say,
‘T h is statem en t is also tru e,

and we will a ls o assume t h i s and t h i s ,
a n d , oh yes, th is should b e true also '
Instead, w e c a n s a y ( i n t h e t r u e sp ir it o f p u r e m a t h e m a t i c s ) ,
'If you b e li e v e s t a t e m e n t s Pi — P12 be lo w , t h e n you must

a ls o b e li e v e THIS, a n d th is , a n d T il l s . . . . '
( L o g i c g iv e s y o u no o t h e r c h o ic e ! )
T he f a c t t h a t ONE DOES NOT HAVE TO GO ON AND ON AND ON

ASSUMING MORE AND MORE THINGS ‘on f a i t h ’ is very c o m f o r t i n g to m a t h e m a t i c i a n s (as
it s h o u l d b e t o a n y o n e w h o b e lie v e s in s o m e kind o f o r d e r t o t h e universe).
REM A RKS:
1. T h e following list of 13 axiom s is not the only possible list. Hut
m athem aticians generally agree th a t a good list of assumptions
a b o u t th e real num bers should have about 13 axioms in it, and
th a t the axioms should closely resemble ours.
2. Also, when we say “n u m b e r'’ in this course, we always mean real
num ber. We also often refer to real numbers as “reals". There are
o th e r kinds of num ber, b u t in this course we never use them.
R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m is s io n of t h e cop y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

196
A x io m s for th e R e a l N u m b e r s
The set of real n u m b e rs (wc denote the set by boldface R)

is a collection o f ‘things' (‘numbers’, denoted below by lower case letters),
together with
two ‘operations’ ( '+ ' and *•' ), and
a certain subeollection of numbers, denoted by boldface P (for ‘positive'),
satisfying these 13 axioms ( P for ‘property’, or ‘postulate’ ):
Pi For any numbers 0 , 6, c, (a + b) + c = a + (6 + c) . (‘associativity o f + ’)
P2 There is a number ‘0’ such that for all numbers 0 ,a + 0 = a .
P3 For each number a , there is a number ‘ - a ’ such that a + ( - 0) = 0 .
P <1 If a and b are any numbers, then a + 6 = b + a . (‘commutativity of + ’)
PS If a,b,c arc any numbers, then (a • 6) • c = 0 • (b • c) . (‘associativity of •’)
PC There is a number ‘1’ with the property th a t for any number a ,

o l = a . Moreover, 1 is not 0 . (!)
P7 For any number a different from 0 ,there is a number ' a ~ l ’

(also written - , or 1/ a ) such that a • (a -1 ) = 1 .
a
P 8 If 0 and b are any numbers, then a - b = 6 > a . (‘commutativity of •’)
P0 For any numbers0 , b and c , wc have

n • (I) + c) = (a • b) + (a • c). (‘distributivily of • over + ')
(So far, the axioms have involved only the operations -f and • . Now we list
some axioms which will enable us to prove properties of the 'order' relation, < .
It turns out that we get a shorter (therefore better!) list of axioms if we sta tt with
the notion of ‘positive number'.)

197
There is a certain subset of the set of all numbers, denoted P , satisfying the
following three properties:
P10 For each number a , e x a c t i y o n e of the following three statements is true:

a is in P , - a is in P , a = 0 , (‘trichotomy’)
P l l If the numbers a and 6 are both in P , then the number n + S is also in P .
P 12 If a and b are in P , then a - b is in P .
The final axiom is by far the most subtle one. It is not even clear that wc n e e d
any more axioms, nor what those axioms might be. We’ll return later to write
down this axiom, when it will be more appreciated.
P13
Some r e m a r k s :
Suppose a and 6 are given real numbers.
1. When we write ‘a - 6' , we MEAN the real number a + ( - b ) .

2. If b is not 0 , then when we write ‘ , or ' a / b ’, we MEAN a • (/>"').
o
3. Also, ‘a i ’ m eans a - b .
4. Note that we do not yet officially know that for all a , b , c , d , wc have
((a + 6) + e) + d = a + ( ( i + c) + d) , etc. Such things have to be proved! But life is short,
and there are better things to spend our time proving, so from now on
let's assume (unless instructed otherwise on a test or assignment) that
for any n real numbers O |,o ;,...,a „

(where n is at least three), the expressions
U| 4* uj *4* ***"f and U| • 03 *• • • • u n
arc understood to have parentheses inserted enough times so that they

make sense, and that the resulting real numbers are the same, regardless of
how the summands (in the case of the sum) or factors (in the case of a product)
are grouped by parentheses.
(The proof, which uses P i and PS and “induction’’, is tedious.)

198
Given numbers o and b , we will write ‘a s ’ m e a n s s < r .
The statement ‘a < b' m ea ns 'a d' is defined similarly.
The phrase 'd is positive' m e a n s 'd is in P ' . It can be easily proved

that this is true if and only if 0 < d .
(What you need for the proof is the fact that d + ( -0 ) - d , for all real d ,
which can in turn be proven from PI through P4.)
If a < 0, we say a is a ‘negative’ number. If a > 0, we say a is ‘nonncgative’.
It is not hard to show that
for all real numbers a , a is positive if and only if - a is negative,
and t h a t
a is negative if and only if - a is positive.
F a c t : Axiom P 1 0 is logically equivalent to the following:
For all real a and b , exactly one of these holds:

a b .
(So this property is also referred to as ‘trichotomy’.)
One proof of this fact uses (besides the notations we just defined):
PI (five times), P2 (five times), P3 (seven times), and P4 (seven times).
In the following , wc list some more consequences of P i—P12. In most cases a statement
is followed, in parentheses, by a list of ‘ingredients’ used in a proof of it; of course other
proofs are possible.

199
A few consequences of P i — P l 2
14 If a ,b and x a re a n y n u m b e rs a n d a + i = b+ i , th e n a = b .
15 If ab = ac a n d a ft 0 , th e n b = c ,
10 F o r a n y n u m b e r a , 'a • 0 = 0 .
17 If a 6 = 0 , t h e n ( a = 0 o r t> = 0 ) .
18 -(-x ) = x , fo r a n y n u m b e r x .
19 F o r a n y n o n z e r o n u m b e r a , ( a " * ) - 1 = a , i. c ., — - = a .
UJ
20 (!) ( - a ) b = -(a b ) , fo r a n y n u m b e rs o an d 6 .
(ii) If a is n e g a tiv e a n d b is p o s itiv e , th e n ab is n e g ativ e.
(iii) If a and b a r e n e g a tiv e th e n ab is po sitiv e .
21 I f u a n d v a r e re a l n u m b e rs , th e n e x a c tly o n e o f th e follow ing is tru e :

« s V | t t < v , u > « . (T h is is ju s t th e F a c t m e n tio n e d b e fo re .)
22 If a , 6 , a n d c a r e re a l n u m b e rs , a n d a<b a n d 6 < c , th e n a < c .
23 S q u a re s o f r e a l n u m b e rs a rc n o n n e g a tiv e : If a jt 0 , th e n a ’ is p o s itiv e .
(B y t h e w a y , a7 MEANS a • a .)
24 0 < 1 .
F ro m fa c t n u m b e r 2 4 , o n e d e d u c e s b y e asy a rg u m e n ts t h a t 0 + 1 < 1 + 1 ,
a n d sin c e 0 + 1 = 1 a n d “2 " is th e u s u a l n a m e fo r 1 + 1 ( th e re a l n u m b e r
g o tte n b y c o m b in in g 1 a n d 1 by th e o p e ra tio n + ) , wc g e l 1 < 2 .
I t fo llo w s e a s ily t h a t 1 + 1 < 2 + 1, i. e., 2 < 3. H ence a lso 1 < 3 by fa c t 22.
So 1 , 2 , 3 a r c in fa c t th r e e d is tin c t re a l n u m b e rs, by fa c t 21!
25 If a 0 , th e n ac < be . U a be .
H e re a re s o m e f u r t h e r s im p le fa c ts o f a lg e b ra ic life w hich o n e c a n p ro v e u s in g t h e r e
s u lts a lr e a d y lis te d . W e w ill a ss u m e t h a t we know th e m (a n d o f c o u rs e all th e e a r lie r
s t a t e m e n t s lis te d ) , so t h a t h e n c e fo rth it is all rig h t to use th e m in p ro o fs o r s o lu tio n s ,
o n a s s ig n m e n ts o r te s t s , u n le ss in s tr u c te d o th e rw ise.
a7- b 7 = ( a - 6) ( a + 6 ) . S o a7 = b7 iff (<i = b or a = -b ). ( ‘iff1is th e

s ta n d a r d a b b r e v ia tio n fo r ‘if a n d o n ly i f . P a u l H a lm o s in v e n te d it a b o u t I9 6 0 . )
S u p p o s e fc a n d d a re d iffe re n t fro m zero . T h e n 7 + - = d + be a c _ ac

rr b a bd bd bd
F in a lly , if 6 , c , a n d d a re n o n z e ro , th e n j— = ^ .

200
N , Z, and Q
T h o s e a t e th e n a m e s m a th e m a tic ia n s all over th e w o rld use for
the set of NATURAL NUMBERS : N: = { 1 ,2 ,3 ,...} ,
the set of in t e g e r s : Z : = { . . . , - 1 7 ...........- 3 , - 2 , - 1 , 0 , 1 , 2 , . . . } , and
the set of RATIONAL NUMBERS:

Q : = { all n u m b e rs o f th e form a/b, w h e re a , b a re in te g e rs a n d b ^ 0 } .
T h e N e x p la in s its e lf. T h e Q s ta n d s fo r 'q u o t ie n t1, a n d ‘r a tio n a l1 h a s b u r ie d in it

t h e w o rd 'r a t i o 1. T h e Z c o m e s fro m ‘Z a h le n 1, th e G e rm a n for • n u m b e r s 1.
‘ W h o le 1 n u m b e rs a n d 'c o u n tin g ' n u m b e rs a re th e s a m e as n a tu r a l n u m b e r s ,

b u t th e o fiicial w o rd fo r th e s e fellow s is 'n a t u r a l 1.
T h e s e t N is a lso o fte n d e n o te d Z + , a n d o n e also re fe rs to th e n a t u r a l n u m b e r s
as th e POSITIVE INTEGERS.
W e h a v e this fact, most familiar from high school to most of us:

( I f it is n o t fa m ilia r t o y o u , see p ag es 14 an d A 9 o f o u r te x t.)
( “ I N D U C T I O N " :) S u p p o s e S is a s e t o f n a tu r a l n u m b e rs , a n d s u p p o s e
( 1 ) 1 is in S , and
( 2 ) for all p o s itiv e in te g e rs k ,
if k is in S , th e n k + 1 is in S .
T hen S is in fa c t all o f N . I. e . ev ery n a tu r a l n u m b e r is in S.

Appendix 2. Research Brief. 201
Research Brief
lavs of Blinking about the Mature of Matheaatics
This is a research project on students' vays of thinking about the nature of latheaatics. I an a graduatestudent in the
Faculty of Enviromental Studies at Fork University working on ly taster's thesis.
Hie objective of oy study is to answer two questions:
1. What are the ways students think about natheiatics as they begin studying latheiatics in university?
2. Do students' ways of thinking about natheiatics change during the first two nonths of a first-year aattieiatics
course? If so, tow do these vays of thinking change?
I aa conducting ay research in your course during the Fall 1992 te n . I will observe a nunberofclass sessions, and
adsinister one questionnaire. I will read and photocopy soie of the written work submitted by those students who have
given te penission to do so. I will invite four students to participate in interviews. (I will explain the foraat of
these interviews in detail to the interviewees.) I also hope to talk infonally with individuals outside class tine,
later in the te n I would be happy to aeet outside class with those of you who are interested, to get your feedback on
the analysis I have done by then.
General participation in this research entails 1) granting ne access to the written work you submit for the course, 2)
granting k access to the questionnaire that you completed in the first class, 3) coipleting another questionnaire, and
4) talking with te at your convenience if you wish.
Your participation in this study is voluntary. Your participation or non-participation in this researchwill not
increase or decrease your grade in the course. I will have no input into the grading process.
You are free to deny answers to specific questions I lay ask. You are free to withdraw consent and to discontinue
participation in this project at any tine. You will not be penalized in any way if you do this.
The product of this research will be ny taster's thesis, which will be a public document. Hy research lay also appear in
other published foris. kll intonation collected for this study will be treated confidentially, in the thesis and all
other public communication, individuals in this class will retain anonytous. I will use pseudonyts for all students.
Where necessary I will change identifying intonation to protect the privacy of individuals.
If you have any questions about this project, I will be glad to try to answer them. My phone number is 518-2467. If
there is any question or concern which you would rather not raise with te directly, please contact ty advisor, Leesa
Fawcett, (416)736-2100 extension 22625.
I sincerely hope that you find this research project of benefit to you. I expect that you will discover there are others
who share your experiences, and that this will foster your sense of conunity. I expect that the process of looking
reflectively at your ways of thinking about mathematics and at your experiences will help make your education lore
meaningful to you. 1 an here because I think there is value and interest in what you believe. This research is not
intrusive and should not cause you eabarrassient or harm; in fact, I hope you will feel comfortable participating in
this project, and even have fun along the way.
Please keep this sheet in case you have questions later.
Man Yoshioka

Appendix 3. Consent forms.
Study of " Wa ys o f T h i n k i n g a b o u t H a t he ins t i e s "

Informed C o n s e n t Form - - G e n e r a l Participation
1 have r e a d and und r s t a n d t he c o n d i t i o n s o f t h i s r e s e a r c h

p r o j e c t a s d e s c r i b e a i n t h e r e s e a r c h b r i e f , and 1 g i v e t h e
r e s e a r c h e r p e r m i s s i o n t o ma k e u s e o f a n d r e p r o d u c e my
q u e s t i o n n a i r e s a n d w r i t t e n w o r k i n H t l k 110.
Student's name (please print)
Student's signature
Date
Woul d you be interested in participating in the interviews? 0 Ye s

Q No

Appendix 3. Consent Forms. 203
Study of "Ways of Thinking about Mathematics"

Informed Consent Form — interviewees
Here is some further information about the research

interviews.
There will be two audiotaped interviews, both of

approximately 40 minutes in length. These will be scheduled
in late September or early October and in November, at your
convenience. Depending on your interests and experiences, we
may follow a prepared set of questions.
I will not tell the professor or your classmates that you

are one of the interviewees. I will using a pseudonym for
you when I transcribe the interviews, and I will change or
remove things in the transcripts that would reveal your
identity. If you wish, I will give you a copy of the
transcripts. You will have the opportunity to suggest
clarifications of the transcripts if you wish. I will keep
the tapes.
Alan Yoshioka
* * * * *
I have read and understand the conditions of this research

project, and I agree to participate in the research
interviews described above.
Student's name (please print)
Student's signature
Date

204
Appendix 4. Transcription conventions.
A: So:: what— what— uh:: what’s Colons indicate that the prior sound is
significant about the (.) the prolonged,
teaching style?
(.) K:
Well calculus is uh (.) not quite A parenthesized dot indicates a very
as interactive maybe not yet cuz brief pause,
we
as really don’t (.) know each other Underlining indicates some form of
very well (.) stress,
as well, but urn (.) um
(4.0) >1— it tends uh— Numbers in parentheses indicate
(0.0) I dunno it’s uh— (7.0) 1 dunno elapsed time o f a pause in seconds and
she’s friendly tenths o f seconds.
((laugh)) ((laugh)) Double parentheses indicate
descriptions o f talk or other action.
> < K: through um so that you c’n— Angle bracketting around an utterance
uh s’you can ta— indicate speeding up.
— eventually take > w’ll not really An em-dash indicates broken-off
take it for granted < but not not speech.
worry about them so much
K: you know (.) what you did in An equals sign indicates no ‘gap’
class^ You know between parts of a speaker’s talk.
K: designed to be non-interactive,
it’s designed
I A: (right A single left bracket indicates onset of
I K: [to be "I’m here to talk, you simultaneous speech,
just listen.
(word) K: questions (with like) with Single parentheses indicate uncertainty

algebra about the words contained therein.
sword° A: "that you think’re important*? Utterances bracketed by a degree sign

are relatively quieter than surrounding
Guide adapted from Heritage (1984). talk

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ALAN YORKE YOSHIOKA

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies

Master in Environmental Studies

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Acquisitions and Direction des acquisitions et

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The author retains ownership of L’auteur conserve la propriety du

THI HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

THE SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING

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by ALAN YORKE YOSHIOKA

a t h e s is su b m itte d to th e F acu lty of G rad u ate S tu d ie s of York

MASTER IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

The a u th o r r e s e r v e s o th er p u b lic a tio n rig h ts , a n d n e ith e r th e

R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

I recommend that the thesis prepared

ALAN YORKE YOSHIOKA

be accepted In partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

MASTER IN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

S ept ember 1993 PeJ- (hiPAj Supervisor

Recommendation concurred in by the following

R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n p rohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

congenial home for interdisciplinary work.

Lewis’, ‘Don’ and the students of Math 120, especially ‘Kevin’.

Education Study Group/Groupe canadien d’dtude en didactique des mathdmatiqucs. In

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Kyle Pearce, gave me invaluable feedback and emotional support. I am especially

Meisner, Peter Penz, Gillian Kranias and Chris Cavanaugh.

Figure 1 is reproduced by permission of John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

support of two dear friends, Alan O’Connor and Peter Bartlett.

R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n e r. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

budding "pure mathies.1' We joked amongst ourselves about the transformation we

you leave, thinking like a Mathematician."

That period also marked a parallel development, my political awakening. For

parallels would ever meet.

Fast forward to the Faculty o f Environmental Studies. My stated goal when 1

R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r re p r o d u c tio n pro hibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

turned again to mathematics, this time focusing on the nature o f mathematical

included, is socially constructed?

This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the

degree of Master in Environmental Studies.

The thesis represents a synthesis of the three components of my Plan of

"Social Organization of Knowledge” (Smith 1990a), including pedagogy, linguistic or

substantive components, "Mathematics as Social Practice," and "Politics of

1 am planning to pursue further studies o f mathematics-as-practice at the

University of London’s programme in History o f Science, Technology and Medicine.

My proposed research topic is "Institutionalization of Inferential Statistics in Medical

Research in Mid-20th Century England: The Case o f Randomized Clinical Trials."

production of objective knowledge through mathematical practice.

R e p r o d u c e d with p e r m i s s io n of t h e co p y rig h t o w n er. F u r th e r r e p r o d u c tio n prohibited w ith o u t p e r m is s io n .

ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... xii

1.1 A sociology of 2 + 2 ................................................................................... 1

1.2 The politics of knowledge ........................................................................ 6

1.3 The picture model .................................................................................... 10

1.4 Choice of s i t e ............................................................................................ 12

1.5 A note on ‘math anxiety’ ..................................................................... 14