What are the common errors made by students in solving logarithm problems?

Abstract

This study analysed students' errors in solving problems related to logarithm properties and logarithm equations. It is a qualitative case study. The participants were 11 out of 66 public senior high school students in Yogyakarta of the class X MIPA 5 and X MIPA 6 who enrolled in Supplementary Mathematics course. They were purposively selected because when the result of the test was given back to the 66 students and after two weeks these 66 students were asked to recollect their result of the test, only 11 students who still keep their result. Miles & Huberman model of qualitative data analysis was used in this study. Four types of errors that adapted from a framework proposed by Movshovitz-Hadar, Zaslavsky, and Inbar [1] were used to categorize the errors made by students. This study found that the common errors made by students were technical error, distorted theorem or definition, unverified solution, and misused data with the number of errors of 24 (38.71%), 15 (24.19%), 12 (19.36%), and 11 (17.74%) respectively. This finding indicates that the students were careless in calculating or manipulating algebraic operation, tendentious to treat "log" as a variable, and deficient in mastering the concept of exponent and logarithm.