Writing plays a central role in mathematical communication. Future teachers in Massachusetts are currently required to pass the Massachusetts Teachers Test to become provisionally or permanently certified. The Mathematics subject test contains writing assignments that each require responses that are over 400 words in length. Mathematicians , professional, amateur and mathematics students in training, must write extensively to clarify and document results as well as to communicate them with the community of mathematicians.
Writing is among the most important ways that mathematics is communicated.
Writing in mathematics aids not only in communication, but in learning. In a sense, writing in mathematics helps you communicate to yourself what is important, how ideas fit together, and the like. Extensive literature devoted to writing in mathematics, some of which is contained in References and Resources , uniformly suggests that writing in mathematics serves as a critical tool for learning. The triumphant breakthroughs of modern science and mathematics, from relativity theory to the foundations of molecular genetics, have shared the virtues of elegance, economy, clarity, and simplicity, no matter how counterintuitive the discoveries may have been.