Proofs in High School Geometry

Journal Number 1

                Thinking back to my first time taking geometry in middle school, I never had any proof lesions.  When I changed school districts for high school I was made to take geometry a second time. This time I got one week of two-column proofs.  I decided at that time I hated proofs because they were hard to understand with all the pressure to learn them in one week.  However the story does not end there, I joined Boise State and took Math 187 my first semester here. This being a proof class was like walking into hell for me. Half the things the teacher started with I did not understand, and she was always saying I should already know the basics because if was part of high school geometry.   Except high school geometry for me was 11 years ago, and I could not remember any of that week in hell. Needless to say I having to take Math 187 a second time, in which this time I can understand it.

                Taking my experience into account, I would say all high-school geometry needs to have at least one month of each type of proof: paragraph and two-column.  Why do I say both? The reason is that I fell two-column proofs are a good start point for a beginning student. It helps To see where everything is going. One good example is by a Doctor Alicia, who shows that not only in math do you see two-column proofs but that they can also be used by a prosecuting attorney (Math forum, 2000). If you give the students this skill they can use it for other things very easily and bring it to things outside  of the math class. The  reason I would like to see a month of two-column proof (at least) is because during my experience one week just made proofs that much harder to understand because I did not have the time to grasp it in my hands.

                Now this leaves the question why would I say that we should also have one month of paragraph proof?  My reasoning is that if the student was to go into other math classes they well most likely see paragraph form. They need to have the basics of this form for those classes. Since the student already had the first "beginning " level proofs it just a matter of getting them to understand the movement of this vision. I like Doctor Ian point that if the proof writer just writes up a bad proof, or writes down an assumed result as proof, then the next writer might use that bad write up (Math forum, 2000).  This would just make chaos.

                Overall I wish I had more experience in proof writing before I got to college.  If I had just these two months of "basic" proof writing when I was in high school, I believe my college experience would have been better.

Source:

Math Forum (2000) Value of two-column proofs Retrieved 9-2-11 from http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/52353.html