Abstract:

When modeling economic and financial phenomena, we need to analyze how these phenomena work throughout the time. This analysis can be performed using a discrete perception of time or, on the contrary, time can be considered as continuous. In the last case (a dynamic viewpoint), Integral Calculus is one of the essential notions and tools to study economic and financial phenomena.

Students enrolling for university degrees in Economics or Business Administration are not accustomed to deal with continuous functions to model phenomena, much less to apply derivatives or integrals to analyze them.

As integration is one of the basic operations to get information from continuous functions, students in Business or Economics need to develop their skills related to integration of basic functions. This paper analyzes which deficiencies and difficulties can be observed in our students when taking the usual contents on Integral Calculus in a course of Mathematics for Business or Economics.


With respect to the way in which we have dealt with our students' trouble about Integral Calculus, we suggested the use of visualization and software of dynamic geometry in order to reduce the formalism and symbolism of concepts and procedures. Indeed, we include some example of this approach in our teaching experience, suggesting how to use this proposal.

As conclusion, we advocate that pre-requisites about Integral Calculus for students coming from Upper Secondry Education are insufficient to face the topics about integrals and its application even when students have previously work with integrals due to they have not worked integrals conceptually or contextually, but only automated how to apply integration methods based on a taxonomy of benchmark problems to pass the university entrance exam. At this respect, we suggest the need of introducing and explaining integrals avoding the critical troube involving the symbolism and formalism usually involved in University Mathematics courses; that is, putting the emphasis on the visualization of concepts and procedures instead of the mere computation.

Keywords:

Higher eduaction, Calculus, mathematical skills, business, economics