The aim of this study is to explore Israeli high school graduates’ mathematical explanations for the spread of the coronavirus, given that the mathematics required to do so was part of their school curriculum. An online questionnaire consisting of two sections provided a variety of potential framings for explaining the phenomenon. The first section invited the participants to explain the spread of the coronavirus in terms of their school majors in general, with no specific reference to mathematics. The second section asked explicitly to explain the mathematical context underlying the phenomenon. In this section, the participants were asked to discuss the Prime Minister’s speech given in the media a few weeks earlier, in which he described the spread of the coronavirus as a geometric series. Data analysis of 87 participants’ responses to the questionnaire revealed 11 different mathematical ideas used to explain the spread of the coronavirus. These ideas included are as follows: doubling, sequence, exponential growth, using powers, tree diagram, recursion, fast-growing rate with covariation, probability, parabola and quadratic function, acceleration, and factorial. It was also found that the second section of the questionnaire elicited a wider range of mathematical ideas than the first one. We suggest possible explanations for the emergence of the mathematical ideas, which seem to reflect the graduates’ intuitive knowledge, influenced not only by their mathematics track level but also by their chosen high school majors. Possible implications are discussed.

这项研究的目的是探索以色列高中毕业生对冠状病毒传播的数学解释，因为这样做所需的数学是他们学校课程的一部分。一份由两部分组成的在线调查问卷为解释这一现象提供了多种可能的框架。第一部分邀请参与者从他们的学校专业角度解释冠状病毒的传播，没有具体提到数学。第二部分明确要求解释这一现象背后的数学背景。在本节中，参与者被要求讨论几周前总理在媒体上发表的讲话，他在讲话中将冠状病毒的传播描述为几何系列。对 87 名参与者对问卷的回答的数据分析揭示了用于解释冠状病毒传播的 11 种不同的数学思想。这些想法包括如下：加倍、序列、指数增长、使用幂、树图、递归、具有协变的快速增长速率、概率、抛物线和二次函数、加速度和阶乘。还发现问卷的第二部分比第一部分引出了更广泛的数学思想。我们对数学思想的出现提出了可能的解释，这些思想似乎反映了毕业生的直觉知识，不仅受到他们的数学轨道水平的影响，而且还受到他们所选择的高中专业的影响。讨论了可能的影响。