Testing The Limits Of 'concrete' And 'generic'

摘要

Here are two ways to introduce the mathematical group of order three: (Ⅰ) say that it is the set of 0,1, and 2, together with the operation of "addition modulo 3." (ⅱ) Say that it is made of three elements a, b, and c, together with an explicitly defined operation. J. A. Kaminski et al. (" T he advantage of abstract examples in learning math," Education Forum, 25 April, p. 454) labeled as "concrete" the examples based on the first definition and labeled as "generic" the ones based on the second.