A Student’s Strategies in Deriving Quartic Modelling Functions Using Rates of Changes
Karoline Afamasaga-Fuata’tThis paper reports findings from a research study which examined students’ strategies for deriving modelling functions from numerical patterns with rates of changes in contrast to the equation-graph matching approach prevalent in schools. Students involved were final year mathematics undergraduate students some of whom were practicing teachers of mathematics or were intending to teach. Students had already examined the cases of linear, quadratic, cubic and some exponential functions and were requested to extend their projects to quartics, other exponential functions and a trigonometric or logarithmic function. This paper presents and discusses the data from the quartic project of one of the 8 students involved in the study.