WHY COMPUTER-SCIENCE STUDENTS FIND FORMAL REASONING FRIGHTENING

This paper focuses on difficulties which first-year undergraduate comp uter science students experience in learning formal reasoning techniqu es. The main findings from an empirical investigation are reported. Th ese indicated that, in the student population studied, many of those d ifficulties stemmed from a combination of the mathematical content of the courses and the students' unfamiliarity with formal notations and language. The paper concludes by discussing a selection of computer-ba sed tools which have been selected to address these difficulties.