Abstract: Equivalence is one of the central concepts of mathematics and is a fixture in the K-16 curriculum. Though equivalence has been very well-studied overall, very little is known about how students reason with formal equivalence relations in advanced mathematics. Recent research has demonstrated that one component of productive reasoning about equivalence relations entails the ability to flexibly move between viewing equivalence from both an elementwise (local) perspective and a set-oriented (global) perspective. Building on this work, I report on a pilot study in which I seek to refine the notion of a global perspective on equivalence. Specifically, by showcasing excerpts from task-based clinical interviews with advanced mathematics students, I propose ‘strategic indifference’ as a beneficial way of reasoning about equivalence from a global perspective.