Comparison and Evaluation of Didactic Methods in Numerical Analysis for the Teaching of Cubic Spline Interpolation

Sammanfattning: In mathematical education it is crucial to have a good teaching plan and to execute it correctly. In particular, this is true in the field of numerical analysis. Every teacher has a different style of teaching. This thesis studies how the basic material of a particular topic in numerical analysis was developed in four different textbooks. We compare and evaluate this process in order to achieve a good teaching strategy. The topic we chose for this research is cubic spline interpolation. Although this topic is a basic one in numerical analysis it may be complicated for students to understand. The aim of the thesis is to analyze the effectiveness of different approaches of teaching cubic spline interpolation and then use this insight to write our own chapter. We intend to channel every-day thinking into a more technical/practical presentation of a topic in numerical analysis. The didactic methodology that we use here can be extended to cover other topics in numerical analysis.