Teaching and Learning Discrete Mathematics Worldwide: Curriculum and Research

Abstract

“Discrete mathematics is the math of our time.” So declared the immediate past president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, John Dossey, in 1991 (as referenced in the first chapter, “Discrete Mathematics is Essential Mathematics in a 21st Century School Curriculum,” of this volume). Nearly 30 years later that statement is still true, although the news has not yet fully reached school mathematics curricula. Nevertheless, much valuable work has been done, and continues to be done. This volume reports on some of that work. It provides a glimpse of the state of the art in learning and teaching discrete mathematics around the world, and it makes the case once again that discrete mathematics is indeed mathematics for our time, even more so today in our digital age, and it should be included in the core curricula of all countries for all students. The chapters in this book are extended versions of papers presented at the thirteenth International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-13), held in Hamburg, Germany, in July 2016, as part of Topic Study Group 17 on discrete mathematics. The chapters are organized into six sections. The first section examines current thinking about discrete mathematics in the school curriculum. The remaining sections focus on core discrete mathematics content and practices for school mathematics—combinatorics and combinatorial reasoning, recursion and recursive thinking, networks and graphs, fair decision-making and game theory, and, finally, logic and proof. A brief description of the chapters in each section follows.