Explanation in mathematical conversations: an empirical investigation

Journal article

Analysis of online mathematics forums can help reveal how explanation is used by mathematicians; we contend that this use of explanation may help to provide an informal conceptualization of simplicity. We extracted six conjectures from recent philosophical work on the occurrence and characteristics of explanation in mathematics. We then tested these conjectures against a corpus derived from online mathematical discussions. To this end, we employed two techniques, one based on indicator terms, the other on a random sample of comments lacking such indicators. Our findings suggest that explanation is widespread in mathematical practice and that it occurs not only in proofs but also in other mathematical contexts. Our work also provides further evidence for the utility of empirical methods in addressing philosophical problems.

Authors: Pease, A; Aberdein, A; Martin, U

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Royal Society
• Journal: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
• Volume: 377
• Issue: 2140
• Article number: 20180159
• Publication date: 2019-01-21
• Acceptance date: 2018-08-22
• DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2018.0159
• EISSN: 1471-2962
• ISSN: 1364-503X
• Keywords: experimental philosophy; Hilbert problems; crowd-sourced mathematics; explanation; mathematical practice