Modeling the phenomenon versus modeling the data set

ABSTRACT This paper investigates students’ mathematical modeling activity in data-rich modeling tasks. It aims at gaining insight into how students develop meaning when modeling data-rich situations and the mathematical models produced. A tendency to model a particular dataset, rather than the phenomenon that the dataset is a particular instance of, has been observed previously. Students concentrate on fitting mathematical objects such as functions to data, rather than using domain knowledge about the situation being modeled, mapping this to the data so as to capture the phenomenon as a whole. In other instances, students find functions that simply linearly interpolate the data and do not consider key features of the phenomenon, particularly when they have access to technological tools. The extent to which students’ reasoning indicated awareness of their taking either approach was investigated in a qualitative study with Year 10/11 students. How the approach taken affected the processes students engage in whilst modeling was also investigated. The paper contributes to our currently limited literature on research into this issue and how it affects the outcome of students learning to model in classrooms at this level of schooling.