What Do Adults Remember from Their High School Mathematics? The Case of Linear Functions

A qualitative study was designed to investigate adults' long-term memory of mathematics learned in high school. Twenty-four men and women, aged 30 to 45, were requested to recall mathematical concepts and procedures during individual interviews. This article reports findings regarding the subjects' attempts to draw graphs of simple linear functions. In general, these findings support the idea that retaining high school mathematical content strongly depends on the number, level, and total length of mathematics courses taken by the student. Diverse responses to the task of drawing a graph of a linear function such as y=2x, were documented and categorized. In many of these responses, the basic mathematical communal notion of linear graphing was replaced with personal on-the-spot constructing of ideas. Detailed analysis of three cases is presented, based on recall theories that explain the mechanism of recalling in terms of reconstruction vs. reproduction.