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>Sadly, the rot extends to math textbooks as well, which, with very few exceptions, are simply horrible. I mean really, really bad. It is commonly considered a
by nothis 15y ago
>Sadly, the rot extends to math textbooks as well, which, with very few exceptions, are simply horrible. I mean really, really bad. It is commonly considered a great faux pas to actually explain what you're doing. You will be accused of being overly wordy if you do anything other than produce an endless sequence of definition-theorem-proof. Mathematicians too often seem to take absolute delight in being as opaque as possible. I can't tell you how many times I have heard friends and colleagues praise for their concision textbooks which, to my mind, are better described as harbingers of the apocalypse. If, as a textbook author, you place yourself in the student's shoes and try to anticipate the sorts of questions he is likely to have approaching the material for the first time, a great many of your colleagues will say that you have done it wrong.
As someone who only ever encounters math as a tool rather than a a great passion or source of intellectual stimulation, it makes me really happy to see this said out loud.
- TillE 15y agoUgh, I had a physical chemistry textbook like that. All math, very little explanation of why or how to apply the math. I remember reading one chapter over and over again, desperately attempting to glean what shreds of meaning I could from the bare minimum of information presented. It was like trying to solve a puzzle. Please, please don't write textbooks like that.
- owenmarshall 15y ago>As someone who only ever encounters math as a tool rather than a a great passion or source of intellectual stimulation, it makes me really happy to see this said out loud. From the perspective of a mathematician, I'd like to see textbooks strike a happy medium between page after page of explanation and absolute terseness. When I'm taking an intermediate level course, I know that the math I encounter may rarely be useful on its own. It should be sufficient to say "you won't even think about this until you take analysis!" I think the biggest mistake universities make is to offer one type of math instruction. I still remember taking a linear algebra class that had mathematics majors, engineers, and secondary education majors(!) all in the same class! The professor taught it in a way that I very much appreciated -- a large focus on theory and concepts, and much less focus on application & concrete problems. Of course, I and the math majors loved this, while the education majors & engineers detested it. It might've been more difficult, but I believe that everyone would've benefited from instruction that was tailored to what people would need & could appreciate -- the engineers could learn applications of linear algebra, the secondary education majors could learn how to teach linear algebra, and the mathematicians could learn the theory behind linear algebra. Instead, we had one class that a subset was guaranteed to hate.
- bitwize 15y agoIs it worth reposting the yarn from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman about teaching physics in Brazil?