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Or perhaps the “hardcore” texts are just poorly written?
by smohare 6y ago
Or perhaps the “hardcore” texts are just poorly written?
- c-smile 6y agoYeah, that's what I said, "poorly written" is a criteria that can be applied to belletristic more than to science text books. Russian math books have just few words, formulas are the rest. What can be poorly written there? Kidding :)
- ssivark 6y agoAu contraire, they’re some of the best textbooks I’ve had the fortune of reading! :-) They make the student work (participate actively in your own education), which I’ve noticed that American textbooks (at least modern high school & college textbooks) seem loath to do. I don’t know why — you don’t develop what you don’t exercise!
- concerned_user 6y agoIf you open any soviet textbook you will see the following text on title page: (loosely translated) "Supplementary reading for students of xx specialties higher education" it can school level or college level. But in essence those books are an addition to the course which is mainly delivered by lectures. You can study by yourself but it will be hard and you will need extra material to replace lectures.
- madhadron 6y agoHaving worked from translations and occasionally originals of some of the Russian texts, they're actually utterly marvelous.
- visarga 6y agoSame situation in Romania, some of the best math problem books I found were a bunch of books printed before 1980's. The problems were just wonderful. I was desperately searching for them for my kids through my father's library. In 1990's after the revolution we got humanitarian aid from Western Europe, including some French math textbooks. They were so low level (simple) I was in disbelief. Useless.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoI had the same reaction in Poland, when my grandfather gave me some textbooks from his collection. They were an order of magnitude better than what I was using at school.
- ddalex 6y agoand, somehow, the economic and social system in France is much better than the one in Romania my take is that the western-style school focuses on getting students life skills, while the eastern-Europe one focuses on cramming knowledge in the brain
- visarga 6y agoMaybe it's also the context, the gradual buildup France had over Romania at the time and now. Romania endured the communist regime for many decades and was very much isolated.
- playing_colours 6y agoCan you please share some books you enjoyed?
- madhadron 6y agoThe ones I spent most time with were volumes titled (translated) "Selected problems in higher mathematics." I worked out of a German translation for one volume while I learned a smattering of Russian and then the Russian for a second one. This was to fill in assumed background in things like integration that was assumed by Landau & Lifshitz. It's been long enough where I have no idea of the author.
- jojobas 6y agoWhat subjects are you after? Also, the enjoyment was not supposed to be from reading the book, it was from passing the exam.