Opportunity to Interpret: Infection Rates in the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic provided students a rare opportunity to use their mathematical knowledge to make sense of a top-of-mind crisis. Based on a report in a major regional newspaper, we designed tasks that require an understanding of infection rates and an interpretation of a misleading claim made in the newspaper. Our analysis of 91 undergraduate students’ responses to one of the tasks shows that 77% of the participants used the first or second derivative to interpret the claim. While an assessment for fundamental calculus courses may include both the memorization of procedures and high-cognitive-demand tasks, the findings suggest that it is feasible and worthwhile to build assessment questions on a meaningful connection with the real world.