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Comparing expert and learner mathematical language: A corpus linguistics approach
conference contribution
posted on 2016-12-08, 14:20 authored by Lara AlcockLara Alcock, Matthew InglisMatthew Inglis, Kristen Lew, Juan P. Mejia-Ramos, Paolo Rago, Christopher J. SangwinCorpus linguists attempt to understand language by statistically analyzing large collections of text, known as corpora. We describe the creation of three corpora designed to enable the study of expert and learner mathematical language. Our corpora were formed by collecting and processing three different genres of mathematical texts: mathematical research papers,
undergraduate-level textbooks, and undergraduate dissertations. We pay particular attention to the method by which our corpora were created, and present a mechanism by which LaTeX source files can be easily converted to a form suitable for use with corpus analysis software packages. We then compare these three different types of mathematical texts by analyzing their word frequency distributions. We find that undergraduate students write in remarkably similar ways to textbook authors, but that research papers are substantially different. These differences are discussed.
History
School
- Science
Department
- Mathematics Education Centre
Published in
The XX Annual Conference on Research on Undergraduate Mathematics EducationCitation
ALCOCK, L. ...et al., 2017. Comparing expert and learner mathematical language: A corpus linguistics approach. Presented at the Twentieth Annual Conference on Research on Undergraduate Mathematics Education, San Diego, February 23-25th.Publisher
Special Interest Group of the Mathematical Association of American on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education (SIGMAA on RUME)Version
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2016-11-01Publication date
2017Notes
This is a conference paper.Publisher version
Language
- en
Location
San DiegoAdministrator link
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