Journal of the Mathematics Council of the Alberta Teachers’ Association
Volume 34 Issue 1, May 1997
41 – 45
The Principle of Mathematical Induction: Its Power in Proving Conjunctive Propositions
Murray Lauber
With the development and advance of the computer, the interest in one of its conceptual cohorts, discrete mathematics, has grown. Perhaps because of the new relevance of this branch of mathematics, the principle of mathematical induction, commonly referred to in textbooks simply as induction and abbreviated hereafter in this article as PMI, has become an increasingly important component of college-level mathematics courses and is, at the same time, making its way back into the high school curriculum. Apart from its inherent appeal there are, important pedagogical reasons for teachers to deepen their acquaintance with this principle.
