A Study of Conjunctions in the Writing of Mathematicians

Abstract

The present paper aims to study the use of conjunction in Mathematics books. We improved a database of conjunction to investigate its uses and effects in the Mathematicians writing. The book ‘What is Mathematics?’ written by  German American Mathematician Richard Courant with Herbert Robbins is compared with a book ‘Differential Equations with Applications and Historical Notes’ by another American mathematician G. F. Simmons in the perspective of used conjunctions. Frequencies of various categories of conjunctions have been counted and each category has been given with a percent and highest percent category is identified. ᵡ²-test is used to analyze whether conjunctions are evenly distributed across books or not. The result of the study found that conjunctions are not evenly distributed in mathematics books. Conjunctions are used according to the type of text which made mathematics more understandable. It has been observed that the authors especially the authors of mathematics books utilize conjunctions in writing mathematical texts to make it more understandable for the student.