IMPLICIT COERCION IN THE LCM FUNCTION OF MICROSOFT EXCEL: IMPLICATIONS FOR GLOBAL MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
Abstract
Spreadsheets widely used in educational contexts act as mediators between arithmetic formalism and digital processing. This study examines the behavior of the LCM function in Microsoft Excel when applied to two arguments, at least one of which is an irrational number. According to the classical definition of the least common multiple in ℤ, such an operation lacks formal foundation, since the function is defined exclusively over non-zero integers. The investigation demonstrates that the system accepts the input, performs an unsignaled automatic conversion of the provided values, and executes the operation on arguments implicitly transformed prior to the calculation. Although the result returned preserves internal consistency within the operational logic of the software, the procedure reveals a dissociation between the declared mathematical concept and the computational process effectively applied. The analysis combines conceptual reconstruction of the arithmetic domain of the least common multiple with controlled experimentation in the Excel environment, allowing the identification that the phenomenon arises from implementation decisions embedded in the system architecture. It is argued that this implicit mediation may compromise the representational fidelity of the concept when the tool is used as support for mathematical learning. It is concluded that greater transparency regarding processing conditions and conceptual restrictions of computational operations is necessary to preserve alignment between theoretical formulation and digital execution in educational contexts.
Author Biography
Mestre em Ensino de Ciências Naturais e Matemática (FURB). Professor e Pesquisador com foco em inconsistências aritméticas no Microsoft Excel e no rigor da Educação Matemática Global.
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