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The way you were arguing makes it sound like you are against beginners having access to solutions, or that you completely misunderstood my initial argument. I a
by jeff76 8y ago
The way you were arguing makes it sound like you are against beginners having access to solutions, or that you completely misunderstood my initial argument. I am not arguing about anything other than that. If you want to address that in particular sure. I am not saying anything about people skipping material and getting bitten by it later.
- dkarl 8y agoEven the first textbooks that start introducing abstract math and developing mathematical maturity in beginning college students often (usually?) have problem sets without solutions, and I'm defending that. I think it's better than providing solutions, even for people working alone. Of course it isn't ideal to work alone; it's helpful to have other people to point out errors in your proofs and to present their own proofs to you. I just don't think providing solutions helps at all in that way. What gives you the best approximation of that experience is spending a long time working on problems. Sometimes you'll realize you've proved something false and have to debug your own proof, so you'll be collaborating with yourself. Solutions will only make it harder for you to force yourself to have those experiences.