The Need for Justifications

Proofs are of central importance for understanding mathematics, any deeper understanding of mathematics require that you know how to read proofs and how to construct proofs yourself. But writing proofs is seen as difficult in high school math today, and is usually avoided. The few proofs that are given are intuitive and informal, and varying in style and rigour. We show how structured derivations makes proofs easier to construct and analyse, by requiring that each proof step comes with an explicit justification.

An Overview of Structured Derivations

Structured derivations is the underlying format for writing mathematical derivations in eMath Studio. We give here an overview of the format, and then describe typical ways in which the format is used. The main principles behind structured derivations are the following: The way…