Pease2020_Article_UsingCrowdsourcedMathematicsTo.pdf (779.38 kB)
Using crowdsourced mathematics to understand mathematical practice
journal contribution
posted on 2020-07-06, 10:26 authored by Alison Pease, Ursula Martin, Fenner Tanswell, Andrew AberdeinRecords of online collaborative mathematical activity provide us with a novel, rich, searchable, accessible and sizeable source of data for empirical investigations into mathematical practice. In this paper we discuss how the resources of crowdsourced mathematics can be used to help formulate and answer questions about mathematical practice, and what their limitations might be. We describe quantitative approaches to studying crowdsourced mathematics, reviewing work from cognitive history (comparing individual and collaborative proofs); social psychology (on the prospects for a measure of collective intelligence); human-computer interaction (on the factors that led to the success of one such project); network analysis (on the differences between collaborations on open research problems and known-but-hard problems); and argumentation theory (on modelling the argument structures of online collaborations). We also give an overview of qualitative approaches, reviewing work from empirical philosophy (on explanation in crowdsourced mathematics); sociology of scientific knowledge (on conventions and conversations in online mathematics); and ethnography (on contrasting conceptions of collaboration). We suggest how these diverse methods can be applied to crowdsourced mathematics and when each might be appropriate.
Funding
Extension: MathSoMac: the social machine of mathematics
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Find out more...Example-driven machine-human collaboration in mathematics
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Find out more...History
School
- Science
Department
- Mathematics Education Centre
Published in
ZDMVolume
52Issue
6Pages
1087 - 1098Publisher
SpringerVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
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© The AuthorsPublisher statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Acceptance date
2020-07-05Publication date
2020-07-18Copyright date
2020ISSN
1863-9690eISSN
1863-9704Publisher version
Language
- en
Depositor
Dr Fenner Tanswell. Deposit date: 5 July 2020Usage metrics
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