Students’ attitudes toward mathematics have been known to influence students’ participation, engagement, and achievement in mathematics. A variety of instruments have been developed to measure students’ attitudes toward mathematics for example Mathematics Attitude Scale (Aiken, 1974), Fennema-Sherman Mathematics Attitudes Scales (Fennema & Sherman, 1976), and Attitudes Toward Mathematics Inventory (ATMI) (Tapia & Marsh, 1996). The purpose of this paper is to report the validation of the ATMI instrument. It was administered to 699 Year 7 and 8 students in 14 schools in South Australia. The students responded on a five-point Likert scale. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported the original four-factor correlated structure based on several fit indices. The validation provided evidence that ATMI can be a viable scale to measure students’ attitudes toward mathematics in a South Australian context; Aysha Abdul Majeed, I Gusti Ngurah Darmawan, Peggy Lynch

peer-reviewed; This research study is aimed at improving the quality of the mathematics textbooks available for junior cycle students. It is widely agreed that there is room for improvement with regard to the quality of mathematics at both junior and senior cycle level in Ireland. One such area which can be improved is the e ectiveness of the resources available in both junior and senior cycle mathematics classrooms. While the TIMSS report (Valverde et al., 2002) has explored textbooks on an international scale, minimal research (minor role in TIMSS Report) has been carried out on Irish mathematics textbooks. Considering the level of responsibility shouldered by mathematics textbooks, there is an obvious gap in mathematics education research. The aim of this study is to investigate the quality of the mathematics textbooks currently in use at junior secondary school level in Ireland. This is achieved by investigating, extending and applying suitable methodological tools for textbook analysis. Ultimately the aim of this research is to improve the quality of teaching and learning of mathematics at junior cycle level which should feed directly into improving the quality of mathematics at senior cycle. This will be achieved by rst measuring the quality of the current junior cycle mathematics textbooks and then highlighting the role of improved textbooks in students' conceptual under- standing. At present in Ireland...

This thesis is divided into three parts. In the first part, we give an introduction to J. Harrison's theory of differential chains. In the second part, we apply these tools to generalize the Cauchy theorems in complex analysis. Instead of requiring a piecewise smooth path over which to integrate, we can now do so over non- rectifiable curves and divergence-free vector fields supported away from the singularities of the holomorphic function in question. In the third part, we focus on applications to dynamics, in particular, flows on compact Riemannian manifolds. We prove that the asymptotic cycles are differential chains, and that for an ergodic measure, they are equal as differential chains to the differential chain associated to the vector field and the ergodic measure. The first part is expository, but the second and third parts contain new results.

We examine some of Connes' criticisms of Robinson's infinitesimals starting in 1995. Connes sought to exploit the Solovay model S as ammunition against non-standard analysis, but the model tends to boomerang, undercutting Connes' own earlier work in functional analysis. Connes described the hyperreals as both a "virtual theory" and a "chimera", yet acknowledged that his argument relies on the transfer principle. We analyze Connes' "dart-throwing" thought experiment, but reach an opposite conclusion. In S, all definable sets of reals are Lebesgue measurable, suggesting that Connes views a theory as being "virtual" if it is not definable in a suitable model of ZFC. If so, Connes' claim that a theory of the hyperreals is "virtual" is refuted by the existence of a definable model of the hyperreal field due to Kanovei and Shelah. Free ultrafilters aren't definable, yet Connes exploited such ultrafilters both in his own earlier work on the classification of factors in the 1970s and 80s, and in his Noncommutative Geometry, raising the question whether the latter may not be vulnerable to Connes' criticism of virtuality. We analyze the philosophical underpinnings of Connes' argument based on Goedel's incompleteness theorem, and detect an apparent circularity in Connes' logic. We document the reliance on non-constructive foundational material...

This is an expository paper in which I explain how core mathematics, particularly abstract analysis, can be developed within a concrete countable set J_2 (the second set in Jensen's constructible hierarchy). The implication, well-known to proof theorists but probably not to most mainstream mathematicians, is that ordinary mathematical practice does not require an enigmatic metaphysical universe of sets. I go further and argue that J_2 is a superior setting for normal mathematics because it is free of irrelevant set-theoretic pathologies and permits stronger formulations of existence results.; Comment: 31 pages

We examine the classical/intuitionist divide, and how it reflects on modern theories of infinitesimals. When leading intuitionist Heyting announced that "the creation of non-standard analysis is a standard model of important mathematical research", he was fully aware that he was breaking ranks with Brouwer. Was Errett Bishop faithful to either Kronecker or Brouwer? Through a comparative textual analysis of three of Bishop's texts, we analyze the ideological and/or pedagogical nature of his objections to infinitesimals a la Robinson. Bishop's famous "debasement" comment at the 1974 Boston workshop, published as part of his Crisis lecture, in reality was never uttered in front of an audience. We compare the realist and the anti-realist intuitionist narratives, and analyze the views of Dummett, Pourciau, Richman, Shapiro, and Tennant. Variational principles are important physical applications, currently lacking a constructive framework. We examine the case of the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorem, already analyzed by Hellman in the context of the Quine-Putnam indispensability thesis.; Comment: 88 pages, to appear in Intellectica 56 (2011), no. 2

In this paper we use theoretical frameworks from mathematics education and cognitive psychology to analyse Cauchy's ideas of function, continuity, limit and infinitesimal expressed in his Cours D'Analyse. Our analysis focuses on the development of mathematical thinking from human perception and action into more sophisticated forms of reasoning and proof, offering different insights from those afforded by historical or mathematical analyses. It highlights the conceptual power of Cauchy's vision and the fundamental change involved in passing from the dynamic variability of the calculus to the modern set-theoretic formulation of mathematical analysis. This offers a re-evaluation of the relationship between the natural geometry and algebra of elementary calculus that continues to be used in applied mathematics, and the formal set theory of mathematical analysis that develops in pure mathematics and evolves into the logical development of non-standard analysis using infinitesimal concepts. It suggests that educational theories developed to evaluate student learning are themselves based on the conceptions of the experts who formulate them. It encourages us to reflect on the principles that we use to analyse the developing mathematical thinking of students...

The infinite-dimensional unitary group U(infinity) is the inductive limit of growing compact unitary groups U(N). In this paper we solve a problem of harmonic analysis on U(infinity) stated in the previous paper math/0109193. The problem consists in computing spectral decomposition for a remarkable 4-parameter family of characters of U(infinity). These characters generate representations which should be viewed as analogs of nonexisting regular representation of U(infinity). The spectral decomposition of a character of U(infinity) is described by the spectral measure which lives on an infinite-dimensional space Omega of indecomposable characters. The key idea which allows us to solve the problem is to embed Omega into the space of point configurations on the real line without 2 points. This turns the spectral measure into a stochastic point process on the real line. The main result of the paper is a complete description of the processes corresponding to our concrete family of characters. We prove that each of the processes is a determinantal point process. That is, its correlation functions have determinantal form with a certain kernel. Our kernels have a special `integrable' form and are expressed through the Gauss hypergeometric function. In simpler situations of harmonic analysis on infinite symmetric group and harmonic analysis of unitarily invariant measures on infinite hermitian matrices similar results were obtained in our papers math/9810015...

The present work stemmed from the study of the problem of harmonic analysis on the infinite-dimensional unitary group U(\infty). That problem consisted in the decomposition of a certain 4-parameter family of unitary representations, which replace the nonexisting two-sided regular representation (Olshanski, J. Funct. Anal., 2003, arXiv:0109193). The required decomposition is governed by certain probability measures on an infinite-dimensional space \Omega, which is a dual object to U(\infty). A way to describe those measures is to convert them into determinantal point processes on the real line, it turned out that their correlation kernels are computable in explicit form --- they admit a closed expression in terms of the Gauss hypergeometric function 2-F-1 (Borodin and Olshanski, Ann. Math., 2005, arXiv:0109194). In the present work we describe a (nonevident) q-discretization of the whole construction. This leads us to a new family of determinantal point processes. We reveal its connection with an exotic finite system of q-discrete orthogonal polynomials --- the so-called pseudo big q-Jacobi polynomials. The new point processes live on a double q-lattice and we show that their correlation kernels are expressed through the basic hypergeometric function 2-\phi-1. A crucial novel ingredient of our approach is an extended version G of the Gelfand-Tsetlin graph (the conventional graph describes the Gelfand-Tsetlin branching rule for irreducible representations of unitary groups). We find the q-boundary of G...

Let $ \mathscr E $ be a regular, strongly local Dirichlet form on $L^2(X, m)$ and $d$ the associated intrinsic distance. Assume that the topology induced by $d$ coincides with the original topology on $ X$, and that $X$ is compact, satisfies a doubling property and supports a weak $(1, 2)$-Poincar\'e inequality. We first discuss the (non-)coincidence of the intrinsic length structure and the gradient structure. Under the further assumption that the Ricci curvature of $X$ is bounded from below in the sense of Lott-Sturm-Villani, the following are shown to be equivalent: (i) the heat flow of $\mathscr E$ gives the unique gradient flow of $\mathscr U_\infty$, (ii) $\mathscr E$ satisfies the Newtonian property, (iii) the intrinsic length structure coincides with the gradient structure. Moreover, for the standard (resistance) Dirichlet form on the Sierpinski gasket equipped with the Kusuoka measure, we identify the intrinsic length structure with the measurable Riemannian and the gradient structures. We also apply the above results to the (coarse) Ricci curvatures and asymptotics of the gradient of the heat kernel.; Comment: Advance in Mathematics, to appear,51pp

In this paper, we study convex analysis and its theoretical applications. We first apply important tools of convex analysis to Optimization and to Analysis. We then show various deep applications of convex analysis and especially infimal convolution in Monotone Operator Theory. Among other things, we recapture the Minty surjectivity theorem in Hilbert space, and present a new proof of the sum theorem in reflexive spaces. More technically, we also discuss autoconjugate representers for maximally monotone operators. Finally, we consider various other applications in mathematical analysis.; Comment: 38 pages, minor revision incorporating referees' comments

This article is an introduction to our recent work in harmonic analysis associated with semigroups of operators, in the effort of finding a noncommutative Calder\'on-Zygmund theory for von Neumann algebras. The classical CZ theory has been traditionally developed on metric measure spaces satisfying additional regularity properties. In the lack of such metrics -or with very little information on the metric- Markov semigroups of operators appear to be the right substitutes of classical metric/geometric tools in harmonic analysis. Our approach is particularly useful in the noncommutative setting but it is also valid in classical/commutative frameworks.; Comment: To appear in Proc. 9th Int. Conf. Harmonic Analysis and PDE's. El Escorial, 2012

We analyze the developments in mathematical rigor from the viewpoint of a Burgessian critique of nominalistic reconstructions. We apply such a critique to the reconstruction of infinitesimal analysis accomplished through the efforts of Cantor, Dedekind, and Weierstrass; to the reconstruction of Cauchy's foundational work associated with the work of Boyer and Grabiner; and to Bishop's constructivist reconstruction of classical analysis. We examine the effects of a nominalist disposition on historiography, teaching, and research.; Comment: 57 pages; 3 figures. Corrected misprints

We study two classes of extension problems, and their interconnections: (i) Extension of positive definite (p.d.) continuous functions defined on subsets in locally compact groups $G$; (ii) In case of Lie groups, representations of the associated Lie algebras $La\left(G\right)$ by unbounded skew-Hermitian operators acting in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) $\mathscr{H}_{F}$. Why extensions? In science, experimentalists frequently gather spectral data in cases when the observed data is limited, for example limited by the precision of instruments; or on account of a variety of other limiting external factors. Given this fact of life, it is both an art and a science to still produce solid conclusions from restricted or limited data. In a general sense, our monograph deals with the mathematics of extending some such given partial data-sets obtained from experiments. More specifically, we are concerned with the problems of extending available partial information, obtained, for example, from sampling. In our case, the limited information is a restriction, and the extension in turn is the full positive definite function (in a dual variable); so an extension if available will be an everywhere defined generating function for the exact probability distribution which reflects the data; if it were fully available. Such extensions of local information (in the form of positive definite functions) will in turn furnish us with spectral information. In this form...

Stability analysis and control of linear impulsive systems is addressed in a hybrid framework, through the use of continuous-time time-varying discontinuous Lyapunov functions. Necessary and sufficient conditions for stability of impulsive systems with periodic impulses are first provided in order to set up the main ideas. Extensions to stability of aperiodic systems under minimum, maximum and ranged dwell-times are then derived. By exploiting further the particular structure of the stability conditions, the results are non-conservatively extended to quadratic stability analysis of linear uncertain impulsive systems. These stability criteria are, in turn, losslessly extended to stabilization using a particular, yet broad enough, class of state-feedback controllers, providing then a convex solution to the open problem of robust dwell-time stabilization of impulsive systems using hybrid stability criteria. Relying finally on the representability of sampled-data systems as impulsive systems, the problems of robust stability analysis and robust stabilization of periodic and aperiodic uncertain sampled-data systems are straightforwardly solved using the same ideas. Several examples are discussed in order to show the effectiveness and reduced complexity of the proposed approach.; Comment: 12 pages...

In the framework of quaternionic Clifford analysis in Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^{4p}$, which constitutes a refinement of Euclidean and Hermitian Clifford analysis, the Fischer decomposition of the space of complex valued polynomials is obtained in terms of spaces of so--called (adjoint) symplectic spherical harmonics, which are irreducible modules for the symplectic group Sp$(p)$. Its Howe dual partner is determined to be $\mathfrak{sl}(2,\mathbb{C}) \oplus \mathfrak{sl}(2,\mathbb{C}) = \mathfrak{so}(4,\mathbb{C})$.

Consider the pseidounitary group $G=U(p,q)$ and its compact subgroup $K=U(p)$. We construct an explicit unitary intertwining operator from the tensor product of a holomorphic representation and a antiholomorphic representation of $G$ to the space $L^2(G/K)$. This implies the existense of a canonical action of the group $G\times G$ in $L^2(G/K)$. We also give a survey of analysis of Berezin kernels and their relations with special functions.; Comment: 46 pages; misprints are corrected; addendum on pseudoriemannian symmetric spaces is added

This paper is devoted to the study of harmonic analysis on quantum tori. We consider several summation methods on these tori, including the square Fej\'er means, square and circular Poisson means, and Bochner-Riesz means. We first establish the maximal inequalities for these means, then obtain the corresponding pointwise convergence theorems. In particular, we prove the noncommutative analogue of the classical Stein theorem on Bochner-Riesz means. The second part of the paper deals with Fourier multipliers on quantum tori. We prove that the completely bounded $L_p$ Fourier multipliers on a quantum torus are exactly those on the classical torus of the same dimension. Finally, we present the Littlewood-Paley theory associated with the circular Poisson semigroup on quantum tori. We show that the Hardy spaces in this setting possess the usual properties of Hardy spaces, as one can expect. These include the quantum torus analogue of Fefferman's $\mathrm{H}_1$-BMO duality theorem and interpolation theorems. Our analysis is based on the recent developments of noncommutative martingale/ergodic inequalities and Littlewood-Paley-Stein theory.

We use methods of harmonic analysis and group representation theory to study the spectral properties of the abstract parabolic operator $\mathscr L = -d/dt+A$ in homogeneous function spaces. We provide sufficient conditions for invertibility of such operators in terms of the spectral properties of the operator $A$ and the semigroup generated by $A$. We introduce a homogeneous space of functions with absolutely summable spectrum and prove a generalization of the Gearhart-Pr\"uss Theorem for such spaces. We use the results to prove existence and uniqueness of solutions of a certain class of non-linear equations.

In the present article, we combine some techniques in the harmonic analysis together with the geometric approach given by modules over sheaves of rings of twisted differential operators ($\mathcal{D}$-modules), and reformulate the composition series and branching problems for objects in the Bernstein-Gelfand-Gelfand parabolic category $\mathcal{O}^\mathfrak{p}$ geometrically realized on certain orbits in the generalized flag manifolds. The general framework is then applied to the scalar generalized Verma modules supported on the closed Schubert cell of the generalized flag manifold $G/P$ for $G={\rm SL}(n+2,\mathbb{C})$ and $P$ the Heisenberg parabolic subgroup, and the algebraic analysis gives a complete classification of $\mathfrak{g}'_r$-singular vectors for all $\mathfrak{g}'_r=\mathfrak{sl}(n-r+2,\mathbb{C})\,\subset\, \mathfrak{g}=\mathfrak{sl}(n+2,\mathbb{C})$, $n-r > 2$. A consequence of our results is that we classify ${\rm SL}(n-r+2,\mathbb{C})$-covariant differential operators acting on homogeneous line bundles over the complexification of the odd dimensional CR-sphere $S^{2n+1}$ and valued in homogeneous vector bundles over the complexification of the CR-subspheres $S^{2(n-r)+1}$.