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Okay, the book they wrote is at http://moodle.anoka.k12.mn.us/mod/resource/view.php?inpopup=true&id=26398 http://moodle.anoka.k12.mn.us/mod/resource/view.php?i

Okay, the book they wrote is at http://moodle.anoka.k12.mn.us/mod/resource/view.php?inpopup=true&id=26398 http://moodle.anoka.k12.mn.us/mod/resource/view.php?inpopup=... and I started reading it. Don't. No one should take a course from that book. The authors of the book don't know the subject. That book won't be a prerequisite for anything important. So, if want a first course in probability and statistics, then get a college textbook and/or just go to college. More generally, in college in the US, in math, physical science, and engineering, quite good texts are easy to find, and the best texts are excellent. Moreover, the prerequisites for college are quite basic, essentially just the '3Rs' where for 'rithmetic' we do include algebra and plane geometry (trigonometry and solid geometry would also be good). So, in K-12, just get the 3Rs and then start with college texts and/or just college. In particular, for anything much past the 3Rs, just f'get about K-12. Bluntly, as illustrated by the book of this thread, the K-12 system is rarely able to teach anything worthwhile much beyond just the basic 3Rs. This conclusion is not new: Once I looked at AP calculus. Don't. The people who wrote the AP calculus materials don't understand calculus. Instead, for calculus, just get a good college text and dig in. I learned from Johnson and Kiokemeister, taught from Protter and Morrey, and have seen several other good college calculus texts, e.g., from Thomas. When I was studying and, later, teaching calculus in college, there was no shortage of good texts. Just why K-12 has so much trouble getting good calculus texts is strange and tragic. Once I looked at some materials on optimization, i.e., linear programming, developed by the K-12 system in North Carolina. Don't. Those materials fill several much needed gaps on the library shelves and would be illuminating if ignited. The authors didn't understand linear programming. The site http://boston.conman.org/2004/01/21.1 http://boston.conman.org/2004/01/21.1 has some excellent quotes from Feynman looking at K-12 texts. Feynman was correct, and apparently the situation has not changed. My qualifications: I hold a Ph.D. from one of the world's best research universities; there I did research on optimization and also on stochastic optimal control. For calculus, I've done well studying it, advanced calculus, and well beyond, taught calculus in college, applied calculus in business and to problems of US national security, and published peer-reviewed original research using calculus. For optimization, I've studied it at advanced levels, applied it in both in business to problems of US national security, taught it in college and graduate school, and published peer-reviewed original research in it. My startup has some original, crucial, core, powerful, valuable 'secret sauce' that is based on some advanced topics in applied math including 'analysis' (way past calculus), probability, and statistics.

xyzzyz 15y ago
Not everybody on HN is able to judge textbook's quality, so I'd like to clarify: There's nothing wrong with relative quality of this textbook, compared to regular high school textbooks on this subject. The thing is, all high school textbooks are total crap. I wouldn't go as far as to state that author don't know the subject (although, saying from experience, it's highly likely). The problem is that they don't teach anything substantial, and what they do teach, is vague and unclear. The chapter about distributions and density functions is total nonsense. Serious probability course covers all contents of this book on one or two 2-hours lectures, in much, much more general setting (i.e., probability being the measure on measurable space). This book seems to be meant for 40 hours (one hour per section). It's not like undergraduates are 20 times smarter than high school kids. They just want to learn it, or at least to get a passing grade. The same is the case with high school kids, but the amount of actual work to get a passing grade there is negligible, and they're motivated accordingly. High school teachers cannot just give a failing grade to 80% of her class, because it would mean that there's a problem with her, not with her students. She also cannot depend on necessary prerequisites to serious probability theory to be already known, because it's not, just like university professors cannot depend on probability to be known, because if one learns from books like this, it's not. Without system reform, there's not much that can be done from bottom up.
- ramy_d 15y ago
  I'm not versed in the entire complexity of the issue at hand here, but isn't putting the text book in the hands of teachers a kind of reform? Wouldn't having a teacher, or teachers, write their own text books give them better control over what to teach? Couldn't a collection of teacher add something to the curriculum through the text book and watch it get adopted higher up structurally based mostly on the fact that if the teachers teaching those students specifically added material they found was necessary then it must be important enough to require it officially. The story is written as a money saving venture first, and then a better alignment of course material to state standards, but I'd also like to think it might democratize what those state standards should be amongst a population of professionals who interact on a daily basis with the people who have to test against those standards.
15y ago

xyzzyz 15y ago

Not everybody on HN is able to judge textbook's quality, so I'd like to clarify: There's nothing wrong with relative quality of this textbook, compared to regular high school textbooks on this subject. The thing is, all high school textbooks are total crap. I wouldn't go as far as to state that author don't know the subject (although, saying from experience, it's highly likely). The problem is that they don't teach anything substantial, and what they do teach, is vague and unclear. The chapter about distributions and density functions is total nonsense. Serious probability course covers all contents of this book on one or two 2-hours lectures, in much, much more general setting (i.e., probability being the measure on measurable space). This book seems to be meant for 40 hours (one hour per section). It's not like undergraduates are 20 times smarter than high school kids. They just want to learn it, or at least to get a passing grade. The same is the case with high school kids, but the amount of actual work to get a passing grade there is negligible, and they're motivated accordingly. High school teachers cannot just give a failing grade to 80% of her class, because it would mean that there's a problem with her, not with her students. She also cannot depend on necessary prerequisites to serious probability theory to be already known, because it's not, just like university professors cannot depend on probability to be known, because if one learns from books like this, it's not. Without system reform, there's not much that can be done from bottom up.

ramy_d 15y ago
I'm not versed in the entire complexity of the issue at hand here, but isn't putting the text book in the hands of teachers a kind of reform? Wouldn't having a teacher, or teachers, write their own text books give them better control over what to teach? Couldn't a collection of teacher add something to the curriculum through the text book and watch it get adopted higher up structurally based mostly on the fact that if the teachers teaching those students specifically added material they found was necessary then it must be important enough to require it officially. The story is written as a money saving venture first, and then a better alignment of course material to state standards, but I'd also like to think it might democratize what those state standards should be amongst a population of professionals who interact on a daily basis with the people who have to test against those standards.

15y ago