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

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.Methods of teaching mathematics are different for several reasons, for example, the presentation style of teacher of a particular topic. In several books we can observe a different approach of presentation material of a topic, and at the end we can produce a unique way of teaching but in a different way. In our thesis we study different approaches to teaching in a several numerical analysis books in the topic of cubic spline interpolation. What is cubic spline interpolation? Cubic spline interpolation is a type of interpolation of data points. Interpolation is a method of constructing a curve between some data points. We chose cubic spline interpolation because it is better than other kinds of interpolation. Cubic spline interpolation has a smaller curvature compared with other types of interpolation. Therefore, cubic spline interpolation produces a smooth curve. In this research we study different approaches of teaching cubic spline interpolation to find a good way for presenting the cubic spline interpolation topic, because this topic may be complicated for students to understand. To reach a good process of presentation of cubic spline interpolation we compare each part of different approaches in the books we have studied for teaching cubic spline interpolation by asking questions and then answering those questions. In this way we will show how we can evaluate each answer. Evaluating each answer we will obtain a good result which will prepare us for writing our own chapter in order to present cubic spline interpolation in our way