Analysis of Students' Difficulties in Solving Math Problems on Exponents

Many studies have been conducted to investigate the difficulties and contributing factors in solving mathematics problems involving exponents. The findings from these studies have yielded varying results. Therefore, a qualitative approach is needed to identify these difficulties and contributing factors. The findings of this study indicate that both S1 and S2 encountered obstacles in solving problems involving exponents, particularly those related to graphing functions. The difficulties identified included accurately understanding the problem statement, mastering concepts, and applying the steps to solve the problem. Based on the underlying factors, undergraduate students made errors in interpreting the instruction to “draw a graph,” leading them to regard finding the derivative of a function as the primary step. Graduate students, on the other hand, predominantly experienced procedural difficulties because they only compiled a table of values without proceeding to the graph-drawing stage, and they were unable to explain the differences between the graphs of linear, exponential, and quadratic functions in detail due to limited understanding of terminology and graph characteristics.