5 ms·

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 theo

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.

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.