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My only real critique of academic books, was that the exercises varied A LOT in difficulty. Some books had exercises that seemed to assume that the reader had b
by TrackerFF 6y ago
My only real critique of academic books, was that the exercises varied A LOT in difficulty. Some books had exercises that seemed to assume that the reader had been a honors student, and thus able to pre-process/setting up the problem with intricate identities and what not, before coming to the part where you apply some theorem.
Now - no big problem if you worked with very keen math students, and they'd show you that, or if your TA could give some pointers. But you could easily get completely stuck, if you were using these texts for, say, self-study.
- dorchadas 6y agoI've also found it way too easy to just convince myself I know the material and move on without actually doing any problems when I was self-studying. Thankfully I came across a Discord server that is run by a math PhD where he assigns problems and corrects proof for self-learners. Best thing that has ever happened to me in learning maths, and I have since finished several undergraduate textbooks and am working on upper undergraduate/graduate ones currently, with problems assigned from him and guidance/proof critiques. All of this to say, is it's really necessary to have guidance with it, and to make sure you actually do problems, not just convince yourself that you know the material.
- lumost 6y agoThe missing piece is often the solution book which can be difficult to come by. like leetcode and other problem assesors, you learn a lot by trying, failing, and getting an explanation of where it went wrong. Would be pretty useful to have an online platform for worked textbook problems from arbitrary textbooks.