Educ Stud Math (2012) 79:429438

DOI 10.1007/s10649-011-9317-2

Inversion in mathematical thinking and learning

Brian Greer

Published online: 2 April 2011

# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract Inversion is a fundamental relational building block both within mathematics as

the study of structures and within peoples physical and social experience, linked to many
other key elements such as equilibrium, invariance, reversal, compensation, symmetry, and
balance. Within purely formal arithmetic, the inverse relationships between addition and
subtraction, and multiplication and division, have important implications in relation to
flexible and efficient computation, and for the assessment of students conceptual
understanding. It is suggested that the extensive research on arithmetic should be extended
to take account of numerical domains beyond the natural numbers and of the difficulties
students have in extending the meanings of operations to those of more general domains.
When the range of situations modelled by the arithmetical operations is considered, the
complexity of inverse relationships between operations, and the variability in the forms that
these relationships take, become much greater. Finally, some comments are offered on the
divergent goals and preoccupations of cognitive psychologists and mathematics educators
as illuminated by research in this area.

Keywords Inversion . Arithmetic operations . Psychology and mathematics education

1 Introduction

The topic of inversion is of central importance to the arithmetic of the natural numbers and
the four basic operations on them. That is the focus of the experimental studies in this
special issue, and that is where I begin, with special emphasis on detecting and exploiting
the structure of arithmetical systems, in particular in relation to inverse operations.
However, my main goal in this paper is to broaden the perspective on inversion within
mathematical thinking and learning in a number of respects. Thus, the subsequent sections
deal with the pervasive nature of inversion within the architecture of abstract mathematics,
with extensions of arithmetical structures beyond the natural numbers, and then with the

B. Greer (*)
Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA
e-mail: brian1060ne@yahoo.com
430 B. Greer

pervasive nature of inversion within our physical and social experience. Finally, the body of
research represented in this special issue is examined as a context in which the tensions
between experimental psychologists and mathematics educators are exemplified.

2 Good mathematicians are lazy: exploiting structure in arithmetic

One of my mathematics teachers used to say that good mathematicians are lazy. What he
meant by this was that a good mathematician has an acute sense of structure in
mathematical relationships and a disposition to exploit such structure to simplify a
mathematical task where possible. The prototypical example of this disposition is the story
(possibly apocryphal) about the great mathematician Gauss as a child, related, for example,
by Wertheimer (1982, originally 1945). In Wertheimers (p. 109) version of the story, the
teacher of the 6-year-old Gauss asked the class to find the sum of:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
and Gauss produced the answer extremely quickly. Although there are many ways in which
Gauss might have exploited the structure, Wertheimer conjectured that he noticed that the
numbers could be arranged in pairs 1+10, 2+9, etc., of which there are five, all adding to
11, hence the total is 511=55. Wertheimers extensive discussion of this and related tasks
touches on many of the key mathematical ideas that are also implicit in the inverse
relationships between addition/subtraction and multiplication/division, and in inverse
mathematical relationships in general.
Wertheimer also discussed (p. 122 et seq.) problems of the form m+aa and m+aa+
bb+cc, and variations. A particularly interesting task that relates to multiplication and
division as inverses is the following (p. 130):

274 274 274 274 274

5
This example illuminates the hard-to-define-in-the-abstract difference between compu-
tational fluency and conceptual understanding. A student who computes a repeated
addition, or multiplication, followed by a division, demonstrates computational fluency but
may well lack conceptual understanding. Wertheimer related his surprise that, while most of
the bright subjects he asked enjoyed the joke (p. 112), a number of children who were
especially good at arithmetic were entirely blind (p. 113).
These considerations lead to the recommendation that the early teaching of arithmetic
and algebra should focus heavily on cultivating a sense of the structure of number systems,
the relational calculus discussed by Nunes, Bryant, Evans, Bell, and Barros (this issue).
With specific reference to the inverse relationships between arithmetic operations, structure
can be explored and exploited in many ways, including the use of inverse operations to
check calculations and the derivation of alternative computational procedures such as
subtraction as complementary addition (Peters, De Smedt, Torbeyns, Ghesquire, &
Verschaffel, this issue; Peltenburg, Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, & Robitzsch, this issue).
For teachers and researchers, as illustrated by Wertheimers chapter, probes for conceptual
understanding can be designed, such as the support problems illustrated by Van
den Heuvel-Panhuizen (1996, p. 153), in which the presentation of a calculation such as
86+57=143 is followed by testing childrens ability to find smart ways to get the answers
to related calculations such as 14386 and 85+58. Such probes echo Wertheimers strategy
Inversion in mathematical thinking and learning 431

of testing depth and flexibility of understanding by posing questions requiring increasing

distance of transfer.

3 Inversion as a central structural element within mathematics

Inversion is a basic component in the architecture of mathematical structures, as illustrated

below. Childrens encounters with inverse relationships in arithmetic accordingly offer an
early chance to sow the first seeds for the formal mathematical treatment of this very
powerful and pervasive idea. Some of the most important manifestations of inversion, in
my judgment, are as follows:
1. The four basic operations and the growth of number systems
Both the motivation and the mechanisms for expansion of number systems beyond
the natural numbers are logically related to the property of (lack of) closure. The
following is a very rough and schematic sketch of developments that have taken
millennia for humankind but which a child is expected to navigate in a few years of
school.
Numbers begin with the counting numbers, technically termed the natural numbers.
Within the natural numbers, addition is closed in the sense that the sum of any two
natural numbers is also a natural number; the inverse operation, subtraction, is not
closed. This lack of closure creates a kind of disequilibrium, which is resolved by
constructing the negative numbers. Multiplication typically is encountered first in
school mathematics in the form of repeated addition (echoing the definition by Euclid,
for example) and is also closed within the natural numbers, but its inverse, division, is
not. This lack of closure is resolved by constructing the rational numbers. The rational
numbers, both positive and negative, form a number system that is closed under all four
operations (except that division by zero is not defined).
The process does not stop there. The operation of squaring has an inverse operation,
namely taking the (positive) square root, and the Pythagoreans famously discovered
that this operation is not closed within the rational numbers when it was proved that 2
is not a rational number. This lack of closure was resolved by the construction of the
real numbers. There are yet more elaborate number systems; indeed, new kinds of
numbers are still being constructed (Conway & Guy, 1996). In this process of
successive lacks of closure being resolved by reconceptualizing number, there is a
suggestive parallel with the Piagetian notion of disequilibrium as a driver of cognitive
growth.
The number line, extensively referred to in this issue as a teaching and thinking tool,
is particularly well suited to representing the successive expansions of the number
system up to the real numbers and can be expanded to the representation of complex
numbers in a plane in the form of Argand diagrams (Lakoff & Nunez, 2000).
2. Inverses in the solution of certain algebraic equations and inverse functions
When somebody reasons that 6+2=8 82=6 (or 86=2) then that person is
more or less implicitly/consciouslyinvoking an algebraic principle that a+b=cc
b=a (or ca=b), and similar remarks apply for multiplication/division. This kind of
relational calculus (Nunes et al., this issue) is central to the articulation between
arithmetic and algebra (and see Selter, Prediger, Nhrenbrger, & Humann, this
issue). Closely related are the equations 6+x=8 and x+2=8, the solutions of which can
be derived by undoing the operation by its inverse. Certain more complex equations
432 B. Greer

(e.g. (x+3)/5 +3=7) can be solved by sequences of such undoings. More generally,
inverse functions are of great importance within algebra.
3. Groups
A characteristic feature of modern mathematics is the study of abstract structures
defined by certain properties. A group is defined as a set of elements, S, together with a
binary operation, *, on the elements of S that has the following properties:
1. Closure. If x and y belong to S, then x * y exists, is unique, and belongs to S
2. Associativity. For any x, y, and z belonging to S, x * (y * z)=(x * y) * z
3. Identity element. There exists a unique element, e, belonging to S, such that, for
any x belonging to S, x * e=x and e * x=x
4. Inverse. For any element x belonging to S, there exists an element y belonging to S
such that x * y=e and y * x=e
If, in addition, it is always true that x * y=y * x, then the group is called
commutative.
There are very many groups arising from geometrical and numerical contexts,
as well in the modelling of the physical world (not to mention artefacts like
Rubiks Cube, which, as a Google search will immediately verify, is very widely
used to teach group theory). The integers, under addition, form a commutative
group, with identity element 0 and the inverse of x being x. The rationals, reals,
and complex numbers also form commutative groups under addition. With the
exception of zero, the rationals, reals, and complex numbers form commutative
groups under multiplication, with identity element 1 and inverse of x, 1/x.
A fundamental property of groups, that follows from the axioms, is that, given x
and y, the equation x * a=y has a unique solution (which, in the case of addition
can be found by subtraction, and in the case of multiplication, division).
4. Inverse processes
A more general idea of inverses in mathematics involves inverse processes. For
example, inverse to the multiplying of n factors xa1, xa2, xan is the factoring of
a polynomial of degree n. (That a polynomial of degree n, within the complex numbers,
can always be factored into n factors, is called the Fundamental Theory of Algebra,
proved by Galoisusing group theory). As generally stated, the Fundamental Theory
of Calculus states that differentiation and integration are inverse processes.
While the term inverse is common to all of these examples, it should be clear that the
nature and the meaning of inversion vary among the different contexts. I do not attempt
here to clarify this variation, except to comment that it exemplifies the remark by the
famous mathematician Poincare that mathematics is the art of giving the same name to
different things (the different conceptualizations of number provides another example).

4 Beyond the natural numbers

The experimental studies in this special issue, and a great deal of the related literature, are
largely restricted in scope to decontextualised arithmetic operations applied to the natural
numbers. There are many reasons for going beyond the natural numbers (see above
discussion of how number systems evolved historically).
At the simplest level, would it not make sense to use messy numbers in both research
and teaching, and not just (mostly rather small) natural numbers? For example, what about
extending strategies such as indirect addition to calculations such as 24.211.9? Or, if a
Inversion in mathematical thinking and learning 433

student has reached the point of immediately answering 366 the smart way, what if
you ask her/him to calculate 3.648.368.36 (perhaps with a calculator available)? I am
not aware of research using such calculations, but it would seem a good way to test the
solidity of students understanding, much as Wertheimer did by posing related challenges.
As sketched above, inversion is embedded within increasingly inclusive number systems
and in algebraic structures. It is thus a key element in the articulation between arithmetic and
algebra. In general, the teaching of mathematics requires a longitudinal perspective (Selter
et al., this issue), so it is prudent to bear in mind what lies aheadfor example, the extension
of the meaning of multiplication and division beyond the domain of natural numbers (Greer,
1994). The advocacy of the Determine the Difference conceptualization of subtraction by
Selter et al. (this issue) is partly motivated by the relative ease of extending this conception
to calculations involving negative numbers. Fischbein, Deri, Nello, and Marino (1995)
pointed out the consequences for students later conceptual change that follow from
implicit models for the arithmetic operations becoming firmly entrenched. The implicit
model for subtraction is take away. Historically, the dominance of this conception is
nicely illustrated by the statement that 38 is an impossibility, it requires you to take from
3 more than there is in 3, which is absurd. The source of this statement was an eminent
nineteenth century English mathematician (De Morgan, 1910, originally 1831).

5 Inversion in relation to semantic structures

As illustrated below, a given arithmetical equation corresponds to word problems with a

great variety of semantic structures. A considerable body of work (much of it by
Verschaffels research group) relates to what may be termed as arithmetical operations as
models of situations (e.g. Greer, 1992). Once you move beyond bare calculations, the
situation becomes a great deal more complex.

5.1 Addition and subtraction as models of situations

For addition/subtraction word problems, a standard taxonomy is into combine, change,

compare, and equalize problems (e.g. Fuson, 1992). These are not exhaustive, of course,
and Freudenthal (1983, Chapter 4) considers much richer phenomenological variety.
Arguably, researchers, curriculum planners, textbook authors, and teachers should be more
aware of this variety. Here, I simply want to illustrate the variation in how inversion relates
to uses of the arithmetical operations in modelling distinct classes of situations.

& In the combine problems, putting together and separating are the inverse actions e.g.
putting the boys and girls in a class together/separating the class into boys and girls.
Here the interpretation of addition and subtraction as inverse operations modelling the
numerical aspects of inverse actions is straightforward.
& In the change problems, there is an initial state, a change, and the resultant final state.
The change, an addition or subtraction of n, is inverted (undone) by, respectively,
subtraction or addition of nagain the relationship between inversion as an action and
inversion as an arithmetic process is straightforward. Of course, there are different kinds
of problems corresponding to which of the three quantities is unknown and whether the
change is positive or negative (Nunes et al., this issue; Vergnaud, 2009). If the change is
unknown, it can be determined as the difference between the initial and final states
(corresponding to the difference between conception of subtraction).
434 B. Greer

& In the compare problems, the inverse relationship relates the difference between a and b
to the complementary difference between b and a, quite a different conception.
& An equalize problem is of the form How much does a need to be increased by to make
b? This formulation corresponds to subtraction as an indirect addition.
The clear distinctions between the various ways in which inverses play out exemplify
why Freudenthal argued against taking the decontextualised arithmetic operation as a
conceptual bridge without considering the meaning of the operations within each of the
different situations. As he stated:
As a calculator one may forget about the origin of ones numbers and the origin of
ones arithmetical problem in some word problem. But at the same time, one must be
able to return from the algorithmic simplicity to the phenomenal variety in order to
discover the simplicity in the variety. (1983, p. 117)

Relating addition to situations also complicates the arithmetical property of commuta-

tivity of addition. In particular, the addends in a combine problem play similar roles,
whereas in the other types of situation they play distinct roles, hence giving rise, in each
case, to two clearly distinct subtraction problems. The implications of this difference were
demonstrated for young children by De Corte and Verschaffel (1987) who showed how
semantic structures interact with computational methods. Related are distinctions between
addition and subtraction as unary and binary operations (e.g. Fuson, 1992, p. 244).

5.2 Multiplication and division as models of situations

The variety of situations modelled by multiplication and division is greater, two major
reasons for the added variety being the complexity of the dimensional relationships and the
interaction with the kinds of numbers involved, even when restricting discussion to positive
numbers. This extra complexity applies also to inversion; Freudenthal (1983, p. 114)
commented that The relation of dividing to multiplying is much more involved [i.e.,
complex] than that of subtraction to adding.
A major distinction was suggested in Greer (1992) between symmetric situations, in
which the quantities multiplied involved play equivalent roles (an example being
computing the area of a rectangle from its length and breadth) and the more numerous
asymmetric situations in which the quantities have quite distinct roles, one being
identifiable as multiplicand and the other as multiplier, the simplest of such case being that
of equal groups where the total number is found by multiplying the number in each group
(multiplicand) by the number of groups (multiplier). A consequence of this distinction is
that for each of the asymmetric situations, division takes two distinct forms depending on
whether division is by the multiplier or the multiplicand; it is the former that corresponds to
the inverting of an action. Effects of these distinctions, in relation to the types of numbers
involved in multiplication and division word problems, were empirically demonstrated by,
for example, Greer and Mangan (1986) and by Harel, Behr, Post, and Lesh (1994).
Briefly, (some of) the ways in which division as the inverse of multiplication plays out in
relation to the variety of situations are:
& Equal groups. The combination of n equal groups can be undone by separation (a
generalization of what happens in the combine problems).
& Measure conversion. There is an inverse relationship between changing, say, miles to
kilometres, and kilometres to miles.
Inversion in mathematical thinking and learning 435

& Multiplicative comparison. As with additive comparison, there is an inverse relationship

(e.g. 3 times as long as/1/3 times as long as).
& Multiplicative change, e.g. expanded by 25%, the inverse of which is a contraction by
20%, 5/4 and 4/5 being reciprocals)
As an example of a rate problem, consider the relationships between quantity of
something bought, unit price, and total cost. Finding the total cost by multiplying unit price
by quantity may be considered the inverse of finding the unit cost by dividing the total cost
by quantity.
The symmetrical situations (area, rectangular arrays, Cartesian product) are characterized
by unidirectionality in the sense that multiplication is the usual operation that will be
requiredit is relatively rare that one would want to find the length of a rectangle by
dividing the area by the length or breadth, for example.
In short, as with addition and subtraction, a mere facility with arithmetic is insufficient
for dealing with the complexities of modelling situations with multiplication and division
and understanding the diverse forms of inverse relationship that the operations have within
different models.
The fullest phenomenological analysis of situations within childrens (and adults)
experience that can be modelled by arithmetic operations has been provided by Freudenthal
(e.g. 1983). Piaget famously constructed a theory of how mathematics is abstracted from
sensorimotor experience, his aim being to establish better connections between the
operational form of knowledge, which consists in action in the physical and social world,
and the predicative form of knowledge, which consists in the linguistic and symbolic
expressions of this knowledge (Vergnaud, 2009, p. 83).. However, according to Vergnaud
(p. 83) Piaget was slowed down in the analysis of the mathematical contents by his
fascination for logic and his hope to be able to reduce to logical structures the progressive
complexity gained by children, and Freudenthal has criticized Piaget on similar grounds,
while enthusing about Piagets observations of his young children (Freudenthal, 1991,
p. 88). Freudenthal (1991, p. 6) also relevantly commented that Children acquire number
in the stream of their physical and mental activities, which makes it difficult for researchers
to find out how this happens in detail. A very different perspective that makes clearer,
through the lens of an anthropological study of a very different culture, how arithmetic is
socially embedded is offered by Urton (1997), demonstrating the linguistic complexity and
the relationship of arithmetic to the Quechuan culture.

6 Inverses as models of situations

Inverse actions, movements, and relations are ubiquitous within everyday life. When
travelling to Leuven for the conference connected with this special issue, for example:
& I flew from Portland to Toronto to Montreal to Brussels, and back from Brussels to
Montreal to Toronto to Portland.
& I remembered that when Skyping back to Portland, the time would be 9 h earlier rather
than 9 h later for Skyping in the other direction.
& I changed dollars into Eurosthe exchange rates in opposite directions are reciprocals
(but see below).
& The linear function for converting temperature in degrees Centigrade into temperature
in degrees Fahrenheit is the inverse of the function for Fahrenheit to Centigrade
conversion.
436 B. Greer

In general, situations that can be modelled by inversion (and see Vergnaud, 2009, p. 86)
include:
& Physical actions taking place over time, such as moving from A to B, and back from B
to A, reversing or undoing actions, elements of choreography, playing film in reverse
& Social structures, such as lending and getting back, kinship relationships such as A is
Bs child/B is As parent
& Conventionally defined functional relationships between quantities
However, as with arithmetic operations as models for situations, it is often necessary to
adjust the core model to take real-world considerations into account. For example,
lending and getting back may involve interest; currency exchange typically involves a fee;
going from B to A by road, for example, is not the precise opposite of going from A to B.
As with the previous section, this brief account is offered as a preliminary indication of
the direction in which deeper analyses might proceed.

7 Reflections on research in mathematics education

In this paper, I have argued that the research on inversion in mathematics thinking and
learningas represented by the papers in this special issue and related literatureis limited
in many ways, and for enlarging its scope in several respects, including:
& Going beyond the natural numbers to more complex number systems and elaborating
on the articulation of arithmetic and algebra
& Considering inversion of arithmetical operations in the context of addition/subtraction
and multiplication/division as models of situations, not simply in relation to bare
calculations (i.e. dealing with external sense-making as well as internal)
& Considering the pervasive role of inversion in mathematics and in physical and social
experienceand the links between these (Freudenthal, 1983; Piaget, 1969; Urton, 1997)
Experimental researchers and mathematics educators have divergent aims (De Corte,
Greer, & Verschaffel, 1996, p. 492). Mathematics education in classrooms shows
disappointing progress, despite the amount of ingenuity and hard work that has gone into
research. Moreover, mathematics educators point to the limited horizons of many
experimental psychologists; a disproportionate amount of researchas in the case of
research relating to inversionis about the arithmetic of (relatively small) natural
numbers. In the current context, Robinson and LeFevre (this issue) comment on the
relative scarcity of research on the relationships between multiplication and division (and
on the principle of associativity). They also show that the SCADS* model, developed by
Siegler over a considerable amount of time, cannot be unproblematically extended to
provide a theoretical framework for students understanding of the inverse relationship
between multiplication and division. So, progress towards a comprehensive architecture
of mathematical cognition is slow, both in terms of making psychological research
cashable in the educational bank (Greer & Verschaffel, 1990), and in terms of dealing
with more complex mathematical content. It is worth remembering that educational
research is the hardest science of all (Berliner, 2002, p. 18) for many reasons, including
the power of contexts, the ubiquity of interactions, and the problem of decade by
findings interactions, and that research on mathematics education is characterized by
reasonable ineffectiveness (Kilpatrick, 1981), primarily because improving (mathemat-
ics) education is a human problem, not a technical problem.
Inversion in mathematical thinking and learning 437

Moreover, I am not convinced that experimental psychologists sufficiently recognize that

there is not an architecture of mathematical cognition that can be studied independently of
schooling and that, when it is complete, will afford a clear guide for mathematics education.
Once a relatively low level of complexity is reached, the study of cognition relating to
formal mathematics is crucially mediated by instruction (see Greer, 2009). Accordingly, an
important bridge between experimental psychology and mathematics education is the use of
intervention studies that take place in circumstances relatively close to classroom lessons.
In relation to such studies, I suggest that several recommendations deserve serious
consideration:
& Document the instructional history of the students, such as what they have been taught,
the teaching approaches adopted, the nature of the curriculum, textbooks, and so on.
Such aspects have been amply reported on, or discussed, in several of the studies in this
issue. For example, Robinson and LeFevre (this issue) state that many children asked to
evaluate a shortcut strategy considered it a form of cheating and that every calculation
should be performed. Although they do not specifically offer evidence, it seems
plausible that this could be the result of how those children had been taught, and
Robinson and LeFevre suggest that North American children are particularly likely to
experience a bias towards an algorithmic solution.
& Pay more attention to the experimental contract. How do the students construe what
they are being asked to do? How do they react, for example, to being asked to carry out
long series of similar calculations? For example, what happens when boredom sets in, a
question interestingly researched and discussed by Wertheimer (1982)? I suggest that
researchers conducting intervention studies, particularly short ones, should take into
account that students might rationally decide not to abandon well-adapted forms of
behaviour or invest cognitive effort, knowing that soon they will be back in their
normal classroom environment.
& Use multiple methods to probe depth and flexibility of understanding, as is well
illustrated in this issue. The performance of a student who has reached the point of very
quickly producing a response to a calculation of the form a+bb could correspond to a
wide range of levels of understanding from surface learning to deep learning
(Nunes et al., this issue), including:
(a) Having simply noticed, from a long series of examples, that the answer required is
the first number. The analysis by Nunes et al. (this issue) of results from the study
by Siegler and Stern (1998) makes it clear that for the majority of students in that
study, this explanation of their performance is the most parsimonious.
(b) Application of a taught rule
(c) Behaving in accordance with a theorem-in-action (Vergnaud, 2009, p. 86)
(d) Articulation of a principle such as that adding something, then taking the same
thing away, returns one to the starting point (this feeling of logical necessity might
be termed the Piagetian criterion for understanding)
& Provide support for transfer. If anything is clear by now from research on mathematics
education, it is that transfer (even when it seems to the experimenter or the teacher that
it should be trivially easy, as the reader will observe more than once in this issue)
typically does not happen without considerable nurturing (Greer & Harel, 1998; Maher,
Powell, & Uptegrove, 2010). As Nunes et al. (this issue) put it: it may not be a good
educational practice to teach primary school children how to calculate and leave the
development of relational calculus skills to the childrens own devices. Whereas
psychologists may tend to say that what the children learn is only a matter of what they
438 B. Greer

are taught (Wertheimer, 1982, p. 132), mathematics educators aim for conceptual
understanding that implies the ability to adapt cognitive resources and face a
problem never met before (Vergnaud, 2009, p. 88).

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