The Consistency of Strategies in the Learning of Mathematical Structures

Author(s): Nicholas A. Branca and Jeremy Kilpatrick

Source: Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Vol. 3, No. 3 (May, 1972), pp. 132-140
Published by: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/748497
Accessed: 22-02-2016 06:54 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal
for Research in Mathematics Education.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:54:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

THE

CONSISTENCY

LEARNING

OF

OF

STRATEGIES

IN

THE

MATHEMATICAL STRUCTURES

NICHOLASA. BRANCA
Assistant Professor of Education
Stanford University
Stanford, California

JEREMYKILPATRICK
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Teachers College, Columbia University
New York, New York
The term strategy abounds these days in our educational literature. Children are alleged to have strategies for playing games and for solving problems; teachers are encouraged to develop strategies of instruction. But
like its cousin style, strategy is often applied loosely and inappropriately
to any sort of regularity in behavior.
Researchers in mathematics education should be cautious in using the
term. One assumes, for example, that if a person has a strategy for playing a game, he will be aware that he is acting according to some plan,
however vague or rudimentary. If the pattern of questions a person asks
or moves he makes is to be called a strategy, moreover, then one ought to
expect that when faced with a similar task on another occasion, the person's behavior will show a similar pattern. On the other hand, if the pattern of behavior is neither conscious nor consistent across tasks and occasions, it hardly deserves to be considered a strategy.
A recent series of investigations by Dienes and Jeeves (1965, 1970)
has rekindled enthusiasm in the search for strategies. Dienes and Jeeves
identified three so-called strategies based on the moves subjects made in
learning a game embodying the structure of a mathematical group. They
presented evidence that a subject's retrospective account (termed an evaluation) of how the game worked reflected the moves he had made in playing it. Such issues as whether there is a hierarchy of strategies and evaluations, whether there are sex and age differences in strategies and evaluations, and how the learning of one group structure affects the learning of
another group structure have been Dienes and Jeeves's major concerns in
This report is based upon the senior author's dissertation conducted
in partial fulfillment of the requirementsfor the Ed.D. degree at Teachers
College, Columbia University.

132

Journal for Research in Mathematics Education

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:54:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

their research. The question arises, however, as to how consistent subjects' strategies and evaluations are across different embodiments of the
same group structure and between one mathematical structure and another.
The purpose of the present study is to investigate this question.
A Game Embodying the Klein Group
As an aid in understanding the present study, consider first one of the
tasks used by Dienes and Jeeves (1965). The subject and the experimenter had identical sets of four cards, each of a different color. One of
the experimenter's cards was placed in the window of an apparatus. The
subject played a card, and the two cards together (the card in the window and the subject's card) determined which card appeared next in the
window-a binary operation. The rules for the operation, which in this
case were those of the Klein group, are given in Table 1.
After the subject played a card, he was to predict which card would
appear next in the window. Then he was to play another card, make another prediction, and so on, until his predictions were consistently correct.
The object was to learn the rules of the game.
When asked afterwards how the game worked, subjects gave three types
of evaluations: memory, indicating that each of the 16 combinations was
memorized separately; pattern, indicating that the subject divided the
game into parts in which similar combinations of cards were seen as giving
similar outcomes (for example, any two members of the set {Orange, Blue,
Green) give the third member as an outcome); and operator, indicating
that the subject regarded the card he played as operating on the card in
the window (for example, Green interchanges Yellow and Green, and
it interchanges Orange and Blue). All evaluations fell into one or a
combination of these three types.
Dienes and Jeeves argued that one could identify, in the sequences of
moves, three strategies-memory (or random), pattern, and operatorthat corresponded to the three types of evaluations. They devised two
scores-a pattern score and an operator score. The pattern score reflected
the proportion of the subject's plays that were within a given region of the
group table. The operator score reflected the proportion of the subject's
plays in which the same card was played repeatedly in succession.
TABLE 1
OUTCOMESOF PLAYING A CARD AGAINSTA CARD IN THE WINDOW
Card in the window
Card
played

Yellow
Orange
Blue
Green

Yellow

Orange

Yellow
Orange
Blue
Green

Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue

Blue

Blue
Green
Yellow
Orange

Green

Green
Blue
Orange
Yellow

May 1972

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:54:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

133

In Dienes and Jeeves's investigations, the distribution of the subjects'

evaluations in decreasing order of frequency was pattern, memory, and
operator. Dienes and Jeeves also found a hierarchy of evaluations (operator, pattern, and memory, in decreasing order of efficiency as measured
by the number of plays required to complete the task). Some evidence of
a positive relationship between evaluations and strategies was obtained:
subjects giving operator evaluations tended to have higher operator scores
than did other subjects; subjects giving pattern evaluations tended to have
higher pattern scores than did other subjects. Adults (college freshmen)
tended to use more strategies and to give fewer memory evaluations than
did children (age 11). Task performance was not correlated with intelligence.
Hypotheses
In the present study, subjects performed the task described above, a
second task that differed in embodiment but that was isomorphic in structure to the first, and a third task that differed in both embodiment and
structure. The following hypotheses were investigated:
1. The distribution of evaluations for each of the group-structuretasks follows the same order as that reported by Dienes and Jeeves.
2. The hierarchy of evaluations for each of the group-structuretasks is the
same as that reported by Dienes and Jeeves.
3. Subjects' evaluations and strategy scores are consistent across the two
group-structure tasks.
4. Those subjects who give a particular evaluation and use a particular
strategy on the two group-structure tasks perform in a similar way on
the third task.
Method
Subjects
The 100 subjects were selected from a private residential summer school
for junior and senior high school girls. Two groups-a younger group and
an older group-were selected from the extremes of the age distribution.
The younger group (N = 51) had a median age of 13 years, 9 months
(and ranged from 12 years, 3 months to 14 years, 9 months). The older
group (N = 49) had a median age of 17 years (and ranged from 16 years
to 18 years, 3 months). The mean IQ was 105.8 (SD = 12.7).
Tasks
Color Game. This task duplicated, as closely as possible, the four-game
with the Klein group structure used by Dienes and Jeeves (1965) and
described above.
Light Game. In this task, the Klein group structure was embodied in a
switch-light apparatus. A light bulb and a four-pole double throw switch
were located at each vertex of a square. The switch-light combinations were
134

Journal for Research in Mathematics Education

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:54:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

labeled Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. One bulb was lit initially. By
throwing a switch, the subject caused that bulb to go out and then one of
the four bulbs to light. A play consisted of throwing a switch and predicting
which bulb would light. The object was to learn the rules of the game. The
Light Game was isomorphic to the Color Game, with the bulb that was
lit playing the part of the card in the window and the switch that was
thrown playing the part of the card the subject played. Saturn, Mars,
Venus, and Jupiter corresponded to Yellow, Orange, Blue, and Green,
respectively.
Map Game. The apparatus for this task consisted of a miniature car
and a map of the United States on which were marked five cities (Birmingham, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, and Washington) connected by
eight fictitious highways. (A highway was defined as linking two and only
two cities.) The car was placed on the map at one of the cities. The subject
chose a city as her first destination and then was told which city she would
encounter first on her journey if she were to traverse the least number
of passable highways enroute (the condition of the highways was not
initially known by the subject-they could be closed, open in one direction only, or open in both directions). After the subject had moved to the
first city on her route, she was then free to choose any destination again,
predicting which city she would then visit first. The object was to learn
the rules of the game, that is, the condition of each highway. The task
has a network structure, not a group structure, as can be seen in Table 2,
but like the other two tasks, 16 outcomes of a binary operation must be
found. The operation was traveling from the departure city to the destination city, the outcome was the city first visited, and the 16 starred outcomes
in Table 2 allowed the subject to infer the condition of each direction of
the eight highways.
Procedure
The tasks were presented in individual interviews, one task per interview,
at intervals of approximately two weeks. The order of the tasks was the
same for all subjects: Color Game, Map Game, Light Game. The interviewer kept track of the subject's moves and predictions in learning each
game and the evaluation she gave at the end of the interview of how the
game worked.
Each subject played each game until she thought she knew all of the
rules. She was asked to give the rules and was encouraged to continue
playing if she overlooked or forgot some of them. Because the Color Game
proved more difficult and discouraging for the subjects than had been
anticipated, in the Map Game each subject was allowed to stop whenever
she thought she knew the rules. As a consequence, many subjects stopped
playing the Map Game prematurely, and the game appeared much easier
to them than their performances indicated.
May 1972

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:54:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

135

TABLE 2
OFCHOOSING
A DESTINATION
OUTCOMES
CITYFROMA DEPARTURE
CITY
Destination city
Departure city
Birmingham

Chicago

Denver

San Francisco

Washington

Birmingham Birmingham WashingtonSan Francisco*San Francisco*Washington*

Denver
Denver*
Denver*
Chicago
Chicago Denver*
Denver
Birmingham*Chicago* Denver
Birmingham* Birmingham*
San Francisco Denver*
Denver*
Washington
Birmingham* Chicago*

Denver*
Chicago*

San Francisco Denver

Birmingham
Washington

* An outcome that can be used to infer the condition of the eight highways.

Results
A subject was classified as successful on a task if she gave an evaluation
of the game that accounted for 14 or more of the 16 binary combinations.
By this criterion, 49, 47, and 54 subjects were successful on the Color
Game, the Light Game, and the Map Game, respectively. Comparisons
with Dienes and Jeeves's data on successes and failures are not possible
since they did not report these data. Only the successful subjects were included in their analyses.
The Relationship between Evaluations and Strategies
In direct contrast to the findings of Dienes and Jeeves, successful subjects who gave an operator evaluation on the Color Game did not tend to
have higher operator scores than successful subjects who gave other evaluations. Of the 13 successful subjects who gave an operator or partial-operator evaluation, only 6 had operator scores that were above the median for
the successful subjects. Similarly, of the 42 successful subjects who gave
a pattern or partial-pattern evaluation on the Color Game, only 22 had
pattern scores that were above the median for the successful subjects.
The results for the Light Game were strikingly similar. Only 6 of the
14 successful subjects who gave an operator or partial-operator evaluation
had operator scores above the median. Only 22 of the 42 successful subjects who gave a pattern or partial-pattern evaluation had pattern scores
above the median.
There was some evidence of a relationship between evaluations and
strategies on the Map Game, at least for one kind of evaluation and one
kind of strategy. Subjects who, in explaining the Map Game, described the
condition of each of the eight highways separately were credited as giving
an individual-roads evaluation; the other subjects, who described the game
in a more global fashion by explaining how one traveled from one city
to another, were credited with a detour-routes evaluation. Each subject
was given a back-and-forth strategy score, which reflected the proportion
of moves in which she returned to the city she had just left, and a detour
strategy score, which reflected the proportion of moves in which the same
city was chosen repeatedly as the destination. Of the 39 successful subjects
136
Journal for Research in Mathematics Education

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:54:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

who gave an individual-roads evaluation, 26 had back-and-forth strategy

scores that were above the median (X2 = 15.6, df = 1, p < .001). On
the other hand, of the 15 successful subjects who gave a detour-routes
evaluation, only 6 had detour scores that were above the median (X2
.83, df = 1, n.s.).
Hypothesis I
Successful subjects' evaluations of the Color Game and the Light Game
were classified as either operator, pattern, or memory, with combinations
credited as being half in each category. The distribution of pattern, memory, and operator evaluations, respectively, was 31.5, 11, 6.5 for the Color
Game, and 30.5, 9, 7.5 for the Light Game. Both distributions were in
the same order of frequency as that reported by Dienes and Jeeves.
Hypothesis 2
When the successful subjects' evaluations of the Color Game and the
Light Game were classified into the categories of (1) operator or partialoperator, (2) pure pattern, and (3) memory or pattern-memory, the mean
number of plays associated with each category respectively was 79, 93, and
115 for the Color Game, and 67, 84, and 150 for the Light Game. Again,
both distributions were in the same order of frequency as that reported by
Dienes and Jeeves.
Hypothesis 3
Table 3 contains the cross-classification, using the categories of Hypothesis 2, of all 100 subjects' evaluations of the Color Game and the Light
Game. Some of the subjects who failed a task gave evaluations that could
not be classified by Dienes and Jeeves's category scheme; their evaluations
were put in the category termed other. Table 3 can be divided into three
parts: entries in the cells of the main diagonal represent subjects who gave
consistent evaluations on the two group structure tasks; entries in the cells
below the diagonal represent subjects who gave a higher-order evaluation
(as defined by the hierarchy of Hypothesis 2) on the Light Game than
on the Color Game; and entries in the cells above the diagonal represent
TABLE 3
ALL SUBJECTS'EVALUATIONOF THE COLOR GAME AND THE LIGHT GAME
Light Game evaluation
Color Game
evaluation

Operatoror
partial-operator
Pure pattern
Memoryor
pattern-memory
Other

Operator or
partialoperator

Pure
pattern

Memory or
patternmemory

8
4

2
12

4
7

0
0

9
1

5
1

31
6

7
3

May 1972

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:54:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Other

137

TABLE 4
SUCCESSFULSUBJECTS'EVALUATIONSOF THE COLOR GAME AND THE LIGHT GAME
Light Game evaluation

Color Game
evaluation

Operator or
partialoperator

Operator or
partial-operator
Pure pattern
Memory or
pattern-memory

Memory or
pattemnmemory

Pure
pattern

7
2

2
10

3
4

subjects who gave a lower-order evaluation on the Light Game than on

the Color Game. When the subjects' evaluations are partitioned in this
fashion, one can see that there was more consistency than change (X2
18.2, df = 2, p < .001).
Table 4 contains the same sort of cross-classification for those 38 subjects who were successful on both tasks. Again, if the evaluations are partitioned according to whether they stayed the same, were on higher order
on the Light Game, or were of lower order on the Light Game, one sees a
tendency toward consistency (X2 = 7.5, df = 2, .02 < p < .05).
Consistency was shown as well in the operator scores for the two tasks:
of the 100 subjects, 32 scored at or above the median operator score on
both tasks, and 31 scored below the median operator score on both tasks
(X2 = 6.76, df = 1, .001 < p < .01). Consistently high operator scores
did not, however, imply consistently successful performance: of the 32
subjects scoring above the median operator score in both tasks, only 7
were successful on both. The pattern scores did not show consistency: of
the 100 subjects, 27 scored above the median pattern score on both tasks,
and 27 scored below the median pattern score on both tasks (X2 = .64,
df = 1, n.s.).
Hypothesis 4
Owing to the difficulty of the tasks and the lack of relationship between
evaluations and strategy scores for the two group structure tasks, HypotheTABLE 5
RELATIONSHIPOF MAP GAME EVALUATIONS TO CONSISTENCYOF EVALUATIONS
ON THE GROUP STRUCTURETASKS
AND PERFORMANCE
Evaluations on group structure
tasks
Map Game evaluation

Individual-roads
Detour-routes

Consistent

Not consistent

Consistent
success

Consistent
failure

Not
consistent

29
25

31
15

33
5

16
26

11
9

X2 = 1.94, df = 1, .10 < p <.20.

138

Performance on group structure tasks

X2 = 20.0, df = 2, p < .001.

Journal for Research in Mathematics Education

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:54:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

TABLE6
RELATIONSHIPOF BACK-AND-FORTH STRATEGY SCORES ON THE MAP GAME
TO CONSISTENCY OF PERFORMANCEON THE GROUP STRUCTURE TASKS
Back-and-forth strategy scores

High
Low
X2

Performance on group structure tasks

Consistent success

Consistent failure

28
10

12
30

Not consistent

10
10

= 16.24, df = 2. p < .001.

sis 4 was not investigated as stated. Instead, several links between behavior
on the group structure tasks and behavior on the network task were examined separately.
Subjects who gave the same evaluation on both group structure tasks
showed no greater tendency than the other subjects to give a particular
evaluation on the Map Game; however, subjects who were successful on
both group structure tasks tended to give an individual-roads evaluation on
the Map Game (see Table 5). Subjects who were successful on both group
structure tasks tended to have high back-and-forth strategy scores on the
Map Game; subjects who failed both group structure tasks tended to have
low back-and-forth strategy scores (see Table 6). Of the 32 subjects who
consistently scored above the median operator score on both group structure tasks, 20 (or 62.5% ) gave an individual-roads evaluation on the Map
Game, a percent that differed little from the corresponding percent for the
entire sample (60%).
Relationships with Age and Intelligence
The two age groups did not differ significantly in evaluations or strategy
scores on any of the three tasks. There were no age differences in number of
plays, number of errors (incorrect predictions), and percent of successful
subjects.
Intelligence was significantly related to performance on the two group
structure tasks, but not the network task: the product-moment correlation
coefficients between IQ and number of errors on the Color Game, the
Light Game, and the Map Game, respectively, were -.53, -.55, and -.04.
In contrast, Dienes and Jeeves reported a zero correlation between IQ and
total errors on their Klein group task.
Discussion
The considerably greater difficulty of the group structure tasks in the
present study, as compared with Dienes and Jeeves's study, was apparently
due chiefly to unfamiliarity with the tasks. According to Dienes,' the children in his study had been participating in a special mathematics program
1 Z. P. Dienes, personal communication, 7 February 1970.

May 1972

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:54:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

139

and had solved similar problems involving mathematical structures. Lack

of experience with the tasks may also explain in part the association between IQ and performance in the present study.
Support was obtained for the relative frequency of evaluations and the
hierarchy of evaluations identified by Dienes and Jeeves, and subjects
showed substantial consistency across tasks in the evaluations they gave.
This evidence would be more impressive if one could be confident that
subjects' evaluations reflected an underlying strategy of moves. Unfortunately, however, the strategy scores did not show the expected relationships to the evaluations. Furthermore, although the operator strategy scores
were consistent across the two group structure tasks, a high operator
strategy score was associated with poor performance, the reverse of what
one would have expected. Many differences between the two studies could
account for these discrepancies. The authors conjecture that the strategy
scores, as Dienes and Jeeves define them, are insensitive to the strategies
subjects may be using. In Dienes and Jeeves's tasks the subject is constrained at each move by the outcome of the preceding move. In subsequent
studies either the strategy scores should be revised so that they do not depend so heavily on consecutive moves, or the tasks should be changed so
that the subject can be free at each move to implement a given strategy.
There was no indication that subjects who used a particular strategy
on the group structure tasks tended to use a similar strategy on the network structure task (the Map Game). In the Map Game a link was found
between strategies and evaluations, but the results concerning performance
on the game are misleading because all subjects were led to think that
they had been successful (to offset their discouragement with the Color
Game).
By investigating how subjects learn the structure of a mathematical
group in a game-like situation, Dienes and Jeeves may have given a productive new focus to research on strategies. Our findings should, however,
caution researchers against concluding that the strategies Dienes and Jeeves
postulated have been shown to exist. Subjects do show some awareness
of regularities in how they play the various games, but the critical tie-to
regularities in the sequence of moves they make-has yet to be demonstrated convincingly.
REFERENCES

Branca, N. A. Strategies in learning mathematical structures. (Doctoral dissertation,

TeachersCollege,ColumbiaUniversity)Ann Arbor,Mich.:UniversityMicrofilms,

1971. No. 70-26,765.

Dienes, Z. P., & Jeeves, M. A. Thinking in structures. London: Hutchinson Educacational, 1965.
Dienes, Z. P., & Jeeves, M. A. The effects of structural relations on transfer. London:

Hutchinson Educational, 1970.

140

Journal for Research in Mathematics Education

This content downloaded from 128.59.222.12 on Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:54:25 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions