3 ms·
I had a different problem, I found that word density increases 10 fold, but symbol density and proofs go down as you go through it. My favorite example to use
by juiceandjuice 15y ago
I had a different problem, I found that word density increases 10 fold, but symbol density and proofs go down as you go through it.
My favorite example to use is this: Complex Variables and Applications by Brown and Churchill. This book has been in print for 70 years or something, and it's somewhere around 400 pages in the current edition I believe. My professor I did research for had a early 80s edition, and it had almost 100 less pages than the current edition. There wasn't really anything new added between the versions (chapters are only about 5-10 pages, so there's something like 65 of them) I ended up using mine for the problems and his for reading because I have ADHD, and the wordiness absolutely kills me. Symbols and relationships are much more meaningful to me than words describing them. The real nightmare with the ADHD sets in because of the break in context when you have to switch between two or three pages to find the next theorem, formula or proof.
I retook that class twice.
On the other hand, I utterly and completely rocked my Advanced Electrodynamics course, outscoring even the graduate students, in a course which even made use of the stuff we were learning in Complex Variables (as well as PDEs and all that fun stuff) Why? I had a crazy russian professor who hated all the current textbooks (I'm looking at you, Griffiths) for the same reason that I hated textbooks, too much words and not enough symbols. So he wrote his own notes to every lesson and made his own homework. He said he originally wrote those notes when he first came here, and his english was worse, so there's little or no explanation, just proofs -- math and symbols. A few of these would span two pages, and very rarely three, but there wasn't the context break you get in many college level books, just beautiful math and lots of intermediate steps. The intermediate steps, almost never provided in most textbook proofs, really help the visual learners like me and provide stepping stones for the inevitable manipulation you will perform with those equations in your homework and on tests.
I still have all his notes, I want to bind them up some day when I get a chance.
- joshhart 15y agoI really liked Griffiths. I thought it had struck a great balance between explanations, mathematics, and examples. That book had great examples and homework questions, which I find the most useful anyway.
- juiceandjuice 15y agoI don't mind it, this professor hated it, although it was the "recommended" book for the course. He recommended the following book, but it was out of print so he couldn't teach the course with it: http://www.amazon.com/Electromagnetic-Fields-Waves-Paul-Lorrain/dp/0716703319 http://www.amazon.com/Electromagnetic-Fields-Waves-Paul-Lorr... It's similar to Griffiths, but I feel like it has more examples and is a little more concise in those examples than Griffiths (although I did borrow Griffiths occasionally) I grabbed one on ebay for $5 or something, and it was well worth it.
- zohebv 15y agoI have read both of them and I strongly prefer Griffiths to Corson. Lorraine and Corson are extremely rigorous but IMO their explanation of EM is upside down :-) They first explain special relativity and derive the EM equations using it. But historically, we had the EM equations first which forced Einstein to abandon Galilean transformations and discover special relativity. But Lorraine and Corson just start out with special relativity, without really providing any impetus for why it is necessary, which can be found in the very first paragraph of Einstein's paper on relativity. Historically, physics has been a mystery that keeps unraveling with time. However LnC destroy the mystery by telling us who the murderer was in the opening chapter :-) We don't really appreciate how relativity was discovered. I think teaching the mystery is a very important and easily overlooked part of Physics education which Griffiths seems to appreciate but LnC don't.
- bermanoid 15y agoGriffiths' E+M book (actually, also his QM book) is a shining star to me, a perfect example of the way introductory textbooks should be written. It ends up being criticized a lot once you get to the advanced level ("Who'd you learn quantum mechanics from, Griffithslol?"), but that's fine. It's perfect, even - if you really need all the gory stuff, sure, go get a copy of Jackson's book, or some 800 page tome on perturbation theory and the rigorous mathematical underpinnings of quantum theory, if you're going into the field you should absolutely know more than you can get from an intro text. But an introductory textbook should be exactly that. Rigor is awesome once you have the intuition down, but it's often very difficult to go the other way (mainly because a rigorous understanding is difficult to achieve without having the intuition first).
- rbxbx 15y agoAny chance of contacting said professor and obtaining permission to share said notes online? Then... y'kno. Doing so :) (I realize that scanning tons of a pages and ensuring quality isn't exactly a small undertaking, but I'm sure the HN community would greatly appreciate your efforts if such a thing were possible) Thanks (or at least thanks anyway) !
- nitrogen 15y agoSounds like a great application for digital textbooks on some future color e-ink reader. For students who prefer verbal explanation, some of the intermediate steps can be set to display: none, and the text reflows accordingly. For symbolic learners, hide unnecessary <span>s of text.