6 ms·

The crucial question is, is the text any good? My bias tells me it's next to impossible (but not actually impossible) for a text from 1987 to be 2021-beginner f

The crucial question is, is the text any good? My bias tells me it's next to impossible (but not actually impossible) for a text from 1987 to be 2021-beginner friendly, especially in a field like mathematics.

keewee7 5y ago
Actually my view is the opposite. Older math books has a lot of practical examples. It seems like in the 90s and 2000s a lot of math books started being written by pure mathematicians who don't care about the applications of mathematics.
- Jensson 5y ago
  My understanding is that in the 90s and 2000s publishers started realizing that they could sell bare bones textbooks and then sell those problem examples in compendiums, effectively double dipping on each student. Edit: For example, books like this: https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Gregory-Grant/dp/B08FP7SNZJ https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Gregory-Grant/dp/B08FP7SNZJ > In addition to well-explained solutions, this manual includes corrections and clarifications to the classic textbook Linear Algebra, second edition, by Kenneth Hoffman and Ray Kunze.
  - BossingAround 5y ago
    I think this is actually fair; even Strang, after all, provides answers to only select problem sets (e.g. only odd problem sets in Linear Algebra if I recall correctly) though to be fair to Strang, it seems to me that in his case, it's more a matter of "if you are unsure, come and ask me" and probably not the case of maximizing profits.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    That solution book was written decades after the main textbook, by different authors. Barebones texts books were common in math since Rudin in 1953 and probably earlier.
- rmm 5y ago
  This so much but in mechanical engineering. I was struggling in my course when I happened on a book written in 1980s in used book store for $1 It had worked examples, basic theory from foundation up, and was absent all superfluous info. I credit it to passing my course and getting to where I am today. I still have it in my office to this day.
pfortuny 5y ago
Classical books are usually much more engineering oriented than modern ones, with many more applications. The thing is that most applications are just ordinary things: tou are not going to go much deeper than angular momentum and/or the Stoked-Gauss theorem for electric-magnetic fields.
qsort 5y ago
Why would you say that? The kind of mathematics that book presents has barely changed in the last 200 years. I would doubt there's much difference to speak of at all.
- BossingAround 5y ago
  Because while the field of mathematics has probably not changed, the field of didactics has changed drastically, and the student expectations in 1980s and 2021 will be also drastically different.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Has it actually improved though? Every study I've seen says students are worse at maths today than 30 years ago, so to me it doesn't look like all that pedagogy research improved things. If things actually got better we should have strong evidence supporting that. Images are prettier, sure, but do students who study using modern books actually understand the material better after the course is done?
    - Mandelmus 5y ago
      I think attention spans have shortened (which is arguably devastating for maths), and the materials considered "state of the art in modern pedagogy" are the ones that take that into account in ways that a book from 1987 does not.
      - civilized 5y ago
        Like food and architecture, math pedagogy has been affected by the progressive diseases of modern civilization, so new often does not mean good.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        As someone who had a hard time focusing in school, modern books with lots of text actually made it harder to focus than books with less text and more information per word. I can read 20 words and then think about those, I can't read the same information if it is spread out and hidden within a 2000 words text. So maybe kids has problems focusing partially due to modern pedagogy? Every word you write down has a cost to the reader, and the less attention span the reader has the more that cost matters. Drown them in too many words and they will just zone out since their attention span didn't last long enough for them to reach the important parts of the text.
256cats 5y ago
Maybe just open it and have a look? The text covers a lot of ground very quickly omitting a lot of "pure math" details.
medo-bear 5y ago
dont judge a math book by its date. also i found math books by russian or ex-soviet authors to be quite good, esp those by vladimir arnold
- adharmad 5y ago
  Gelfand's books are good too.
cardanome 5y ago
I haven't worked through the book yet but looking at the authors, Yaglom wrote some great Math books and Zeldovich was an absolutely genius in the field of theoretical physics, so it probably is. As a German living in the Western part, my math teacher would always rant how much better the East German math books were. Math and science education in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc was and still is vastly superior to anything we had or have in the West. See also this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26849866#26850468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26849866#26850468
- AnonymousPlanet 5y ago
  Having the same background, I often heard this praise too, though mostly for Soviet works. But every time I followed up on it, I found that even the introductory level books dug right into the depths without much explanation. They might have been good in rigor or depth, but I found them very lacking didactically. Maybe I looked at the wrong ones. Your link seems to suggest that it's different for textbooks aimed at young children. Can you give me some examples of good East German higher math or physics books? I'd like to have another go at it.
  - cardanome 5y ago
    Unfortunately I wasn't really that interested in math when I was a student, I just remembered the ranting of my math teacher. I think you can still get quite a few on Ebay but I fear that not much has been digitized. I can recommend a few Soviet works however that are more introductory level and that I have worked with myself. A good example of a introductory book with good didactic is Probability Theory (first steps) by Wentzel. https://archive.org/details/ProbabilityTheoryfirstSteps/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/ProbabilityTheoryfirstSteps/mode... Also Physics of Everyone, though maybe a bit more difficult: https://archive.org/details/LandauKitaigorodskyPhysicsForEveryoneMotionHeatMir1978/ https://archive.org/details/LandauKitaigorodskyPhysicsForEve... Link to all the Mir titles: https://archive.org/details/mir-titles https://archive.org/details/mir-titles There are books for basically every level and age there.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
"Higher math" is a very broad concept now, you would need thousands of pages to cover it. This books is basically calculus with applications written in an accessible way by known experts and without confusing mistakes.

keewee7 5y ago

Actually my view is the opposite. Older math books has a lot of practical examples. It seems like in the 90s and 2000s a lot of math books started being written by pure mathematicians who don't care about the applications of mathematics.

Jensson 5y ago
My understanding is that in the 90s and 2000s publishers started realizing that they could sell bare bones textbooks and then sell those problem examples in compendiums, effectively double dipping on each student. Edit: For example, books like this: https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Gregory-Grant/dp/B08FP7SNZJ https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Gregory-Grant/dp/B08FP7SNZJ > In addition to well-explained solutions, this manual includes corrections and clarifications to the classic textbook Linear Algebra, second edition, by Kenneth Hoffman and Ray Kunze.
- BossingAround 5y ago
  I think this is actually fair; even Strang, after all, provides answers to only select problem sets (e.g. only odd problem sets in Linear Algebra if I recall correctly) though to be fair to Strang, it seems to me that in his case, it's more a matter of "if you are unsure, come and ask me" and probably not the case of maximizing profits.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  That solution book was written decades after the main textbook, by different authors. Barebones texts books were common in math since Rudin in 1953 and probably earlier.
rmm 5y ago
This so much but in mechanical engineering. I was struggling in my course when I happened on a book written in 1980s in used book store for $1 It had worked examples, basic theory from foundation up, and was absent all superfluous info. I credit it to passing my course and getting to where I am today. I still have it in my office to this day.

pfortuny 5y ago

Classical books are usually much more engineering oriented than modern ones, with many more applications. The thing is that most applications are just ordinary things: tou are not going to go much deeper than angular momentum and/or the Stoked-Gauss theorem for electric-magnetic fields.

qsort 5y ago

Why would you say that? The kind of mathematics that book presents has barely changed in the last 200 years. I would doubt there's much difference to speak of at all.

BossingAround 5y ago
Because while the field of mathematics has probably not changed, the field of didactics has changed drastically, and the student expectations in 1980s and 2021 will be also drastically different.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Has it actually improved though? Every study I've seen says students are worse at maths today than 30 years ago, so to me it doesn't look like all that pedagogy research improved things. If things actually got better we should have strong evidence supporting that. Images are prettier, sure, but do students who study using modern books actually understand the material better after the course is done?
  - Mandelmus 5y ago
    I think attention spans have shortened (which is arguably devastating for maths), and the materials considered "state of the art in modern pedagogy" are the ones that take that into account in ways that a book from 1987 does not.
    - civilized 5y ago
      Like food and architecture, math pedagogy has been affected by the progressive diseases of modern civilization, so new often does not mean good.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      As someone who had a hard time focusing in school, modern books with lots of text actually made it harder to focus than books with less text and more information per word. I can read 20 words and then think about those, I can't read the same information if it is spread out and hidden within a 2000 words text. So maybe kids has problems focusing partially due to modern pedagogy? Every word you write down has a cost to the reader, and the less attention span the reader has the more that cost matters. Drown them in too many words and they will just zone out since their attention span didn't last long enough for them to reach the important parts of the text.

256cats 5y ago

Maybe just open it and have a look? The text covers a lot of ground very quickly omitting a lot of "pure math" details.

medo-bear 5y ago

dont judge a math book by its date. also i found math books by russian or ex-soviet authors to be quite good, esp those by vladimir arnold

adharmad 5y ago
Gelfand's books are good too.

cardanome 5y ago

I haven't worked through the book yet but looking at the authors, Yaglom wrote some great Math books and Zeldovich was an absolutely genius in the field of theoretical physics, so it probably is. As a German living in the Western part, my math teacher would always rant how much better the East German math books were. Math and science education in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc was and still is vastly superior to anything we had or have in the West. See also this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26849866#26850468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26849866#26850468

AnonymousPlanet 5y ago
Having the same background, I often heard this praise too, though mostly for Soviet works. But every time I followed up on it, I found that even the introductory level books dug right into the depths without much explanation. They might have been good in rigor or depth, but I found them very lacking didactically. Maybe I looked at the wrong ones. Your link seems to suggest that it's different for textbooks aimed at young children. Can you give me some examples of good East German higher math or physics books? I'd like to have another go at it.
- cardanome 5y ago
  Unfortunately I wasn't really that interested in math when I was a student, I just remembered the ranting of my math teacher. I think you can still get quite a few on Ebay but I fear that not much has been digitized. I can recommend a few Soviet works however that are more introductory level and that I have worked with myself. A good example of a introductory book with good didactic is Probability Theory (first steps) by Wentzel. https://archive.org/details/ProbabilityTheoryfirstSteps/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/ProbabilityTheoryfirstSteps/mode... Also Physics of Everyone, though maybe a bit more difficult: https://archive.org/details/LandauKitaigorodskyPhysicsForEveryoneMotionHeatMir1978/ https://archive.org/details/LandauKitaigorodskyPhysicsForEve... Link to all the Mir titles: https://archive.org/details/mir-titles https://archive.org/details/mir-titles There are books for basically every level and age there.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

"Higher math" is a very broad concept now, you would need thousands of pages to cover it. This books is basically calculus with applications written in an accessible way by known experts and without confusing mistakes.