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>I didn’t provide solutions, and I didn’t make a Kindle version. I have no plans to change that as of now. This hurts those that are self-studying without acce

>I didn’t provide solutions, and I didn’t make a Kindle version. I have no plans to change that as of now. This hurts those that are self-studying without access to other mathematicians. I’m not buying his book for this reason, so are there any other introductory math books people recommend that include solutions?

melvinroest 7y ago
If you want advanced high school level maths, Haese and Harris does have worked solutions. I've also heared good things about the Oxfort math book I think. I went to a lot of subreddits where high schoolers hang out. They are brutally honest when it comes to what good math textbooks are.
- solaris- 7y ago
  Thanks! What is the title of the Oxford math book? Have you found any good Calculus text?
  - iMage 7y ago
    One of my favorite calculus textbooks that I've ever read is (Calculus Made Easy)[http://calculusmadeeasy.org/ http://calculusmadeeasy.org/], available in entirety at the link. The book does a great job of not being pretentious about the subjects, the subtitle is even "What one fool can do, another can."
lonelappde 7y ago
If you are in the Internet you have access to the math sectiom of Stack Exchange and Reddit, both loaded with volunteer math tutors.
- solaris- 7y ago
  While this is true I tend to solve problems in bulk. I do not want to post 16 questions all at once for people to check my proofs. Sometimes people think you are a student and are trying to get answers for homework assignments. It would be better if authors would write textbooks aimed at beginners that are self-studying and thus provide solutions. The author of this textbook has a missed opportunity by ignoring to provide solutions. I don't recommend this book to anyone for this reason.
  - dan-robertson 7y ago
    People think you are a student trying to cheat if you just post the problem (or worse, a photograph of it). People will be more receptive if you post the problem, your attempted proof, and ask for some review/verification. Certainly it doesn’t look like you’re trying to cheat (I don’t know about other universities but at mine you weren’t marked for correct problem sheet answers; the purpose was to improve understanding so this kind of posting online for help would be quite reasonable) The tricky case is with a problem where you don’t know where to start, it’s hard to ask a question like “here’s a problem and I don’t know where to start. Can you try to give me a hint?” But certainly explicitly asking for a hint will reflect better on you and adding some ideas you had (and why you couldn’t make them work or didn’t think they would work) would improve it more. The other tricky case would be if you were missing something you never thought about, eg never thinking to check that your functions were well-defined. These systematic errors are hard but could hopefully be found by asking for help with verification with a subset of your solutions. Posting solutions for verification/reading would hopefully also help you improve the clarity of the argument and your thought (and I guess it might help with style too). Hopefully over time, you would find that your confidence in your own verification abilities increases and that your rate of errors if you do ask for verification decreases. A final issue you might see is that if a question is elementary for those whom you are asking for verification (and this will happen a lot however advanced the topic), you may get a reply like “why not just say <some short solution>?” This is about as useful as an author-provided solution but not so great for proof verification. (The reason for these answers is that often exercises are hinting at some higher-level structure/theorem which you don’t yet know about and if you did know about it, you could use that knowledge to much more easily solve the problem) ———— I wonder how useful author-provided solutions really are. If the exercise is to prove something (as many good exercises are) then your solution is never going to be the same as the author’s and looking at the author’s proof won’t tell you if yours is any good.
    - solaris- 7y ago
      I'm not talking about posting a question online and asking "how do I solve this" but posting bulk proofs (that you did) and asking someone to verify them all at once. This can be side-stepped if the author provided solutions. Yes, the author's solutions may be different than yours, but that isn't a good reason to not include solutions. >Hopefully over time, you would find that your confidence in your own verification abilities increases and that your rate of errors if you do ask for verification decreases. Yes, but without feedback this is hard to do. This book is not for self-studiers, least not in current form. It seems like there is a disconnect between authors and self-studiers. I can understand if the textbook is written so solutions aren't provided such that universities will buy the book, but there is a market for those no longer in classrooms that want to learn and an author that takes the time to provide solutions helps tremendously.
- misquotedzach 7y ago
  That is a fantastic waste of everyone's time: both for the customer who has to transcribe a problem according to the whims of an online community and to the volunteers who may or may not actually be able to help.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
commandlinefan 7y ago
> didn’t provide solutions Does he mean he didn’t provide solutions as in he doesn’t work out the answers, or he doesn’t even provide the answers at all? Like, work the problem, get the answer “12” and flip to the back of the book and make sure that the correct answer was 12? Not providing solutions I understand. Not providing answers makes for a pointless (math) book.
- misquotedzach 7y ago
  He doesn't provide any answers.
sn9 7y ago
The Art of Problem Solving books are great and have complete solution manuals: https://artofproblemsolving.com/store https://artofproblemsolving.com/store You could schedule review of concepts and problems you understand with spaced repetition software like Anki to keep them in long term memory. (http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html)

melvinroest 7y ago

If you want advanced high school level maths, Haese and Harris does have worked solutions. I've also heared good things about the Oxfort math book I think. I went to a lot of subreddits where high schoolers hang out. They are brutally honest when it comes to what good math textbooks are.

solaris- 7y ago
Thanks! What is the title of the Oxford math book? Have you found any good Calculus text?
- iMage 7y ago
  One of my favorite calculus textbooks that I've ever read is (Calculus Made Easy)[http://calculusmadeeasy.org/ http://calculusmadeeasy.org/], available in entirety at the link. The book does a great job of not being pretentious about the subjects, the subtitle is even "What one fool can do, another can."

lonelappde 7y ago

If you are in the Internet you have access to the math sectiom of Stack Exchange and Reddit, both loaded with volunteer math tutors.

solaris- 7y ago
While this is true I tend to solve problems in bulk. I do not want to post 16 questions all at once for people to check my proofs. Sometimes people think you are a student and are trying to get answers for homework assignments. It would be better if authors would write textbooks aimed at beginners that are self-studying and thus provide solutions. The author of this textbook has a missed opportunity by ignoring to provide solutions. I don't recommend this book to anyone for this reason.
- dan-robertson 7y ago
  People think you are a student trying to cheat if you just post the problem (or worse, a photograph of it). People will be more receptive if you post the problem, your attempted proof, and ask for some review/verification. Certainly it doesn’t look like you’re trying to cheat (I don’t know about other universities but at mine you weren’t marked for correct problem sheet answers; the purpose was to improve understanding so this kind of posting online for help would be quite reasonable) The tricky case is with a problem where you don’t know where to start, it’s hard to ask a question like “here’s a problem and I don’t know where to start. Can you try to give me a hint?” But certainly explicitly asking for a hint will reflect better on you and adding some ideas you had (and why you couldn’t make them work or didn’t think they would work) would improve it more. The other tricky case would be if you were missing something you never thought about, eg never thinking to check that your functions were well-defined. These systematic errors are hard but could hopefully be found by asking for help with verification with a subset of your solutions. Posting solutions for verification/reading would hopefully also help you improve the clarity of the argument and your thought (and I guess it might help with style too). Hopefully over time, you would find that your confidence in your own verification abilities increases and that your rate of errors if you do ask for verification decreases. A final issue you might see is that if a question is elementary for those whom you are asking for verification (and this will happen a lot however advanced the topic), you may get a reply like “why not just say <some short solution>?” This is about as useful as an author-provided solution but not so great for proof verification. (The reason for these answers is that often exercises are hinting at some higher-level structure/theorem which you don’t yet know about and if you did know about it, you could use that knowledge to much more easily solve the problem) ———— I wonder how useful author-provided solutions really are. If the exercise is to prove something (as many good exercises are) then your solution is never going to be the same as the author’s and looking at the author’s proof won’t tell you if yours is any good.
  - solaris- 7y ago
    I'm not talking about posting a question online and asking "how do I solve this" but posting bulk proofs (that you did) and asking someone to verify them all at once. This can be side-stepped if the author provided solutions. Yes, the author's solutions may be different than yours, but that isn't a good reason to not include solutions. >Hopefully over time, you would find that your confidence in your own verification abilities increases and that your rate of errors if you do ask for verification decreases. Yes, but without feedback this is hard to do. This book is not for self-studiers, least not in current form. It seems like there is a disconnect between authors and self-studiers. I can understand if the textbook is written so solutions aren't provided such that universities will buy the book, but there is a market for those no longer in classrooms that want to learn and an author that takes the time to provide solutions helps tremendously.
misquotedzach 7y ago
That is a fantastic waste of everyone's time: both for the customer who has to transcribe a problem according to the whims of an online community and to the volunteers who may or may not actually be able to help.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

commandlinefan 7y ago

> didn’t provide solutions Does he mean he didn’t provide solutions as in he doesn’t work out the answers, or he doesn’t even provide the answers at all? Like, work the problem, get the answer “12” and flip to the back of the book and make sure that the correct answer was 12? Not providing solutions I understand. Not providing answers makes for a pointless (math) book.

misquotedzach 7y ago
He doesn't provide any answers.

sn9 7y ago

The Art of Problem Solving books are great and have complete solution manuals: https://artofproblemsolving.com/store https://artofproblemsolving.com/store You could schedule review of concepts and problems you understand with spaced repetition software like Anki to keep them in long term memory. (http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html http://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html)