5 ms·

What's the problem with a good book, age? Baby Rudin's first edition is 70 and the latest one is from 1976. It's still widely used and will be for a while. Hon

• contrarian1234 3y ago
  You're conflating things. This issue isn't that Classical Mechanics has somehow evolved or changed. It's that people continue to find new and better ways to explain and illustrate concepts. At lest personally I don't know of any field or book where I've felt "Hmm, this is basically perfect and I can't imagine a better way to explain these concepts". Have you looked at for instance Khan Academy's Grant Sanderson (aka 3Blue1Brown) Math videos? it's really apparent there is a LOT of room for improvement in pedagogy. As the linked PDF illustrates, most people are teaching along a set formula and sequence of concepts. Good teachers will try to tweak and iterate on these formulas and evolve a better curriculum that sinks in better for students. Naturally as time goes on, if each author has to start from scratch, then it becomes harder and harder to beat "the best book on BLAH" from the last 100 years. (Though I refuse to believe it's a monumental task to write a better textbook than Rudin) If you have open copy-left books, then in theory people could start with a Rudin, fork it, tweak it and improve it. 70 years of improvement could yield some amazing forks! "Often newer editions actually worsen textbooks" That's typically because they select a random new author to in-effect update their copyright date.. and the new author is rarely of the same caliber as the first
  • distcs 3y ago
    > Have you looked at for instance Khan Academy's Grant Sanderson (aka 3Blue1Brown) Math videos? I have. I went through Khan Academy, Brilliant and 3Blue1Brown. After spending more than 100s of hours I started getting the feeling that these are all good for elementary level math. But for any serious math (think real analysis, complex analysis, group theory and beyond), all these platforms did was leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling of having learned something cool but in reality that warm fuzzy feeling was not good enough for solving actual exercises that come in textbooks or really deeply understand the material. I've given up on these online learning media. Back to textbooks. The difference is like night and day.
    • contrarian1234 3y ago
      I didn't mean to say videos are better - just as far as I can tell that's where the most creative new teaching techniques are on display. I'd definitely prefer they were in the written word. Especially if they were an open collaborative effort. Books are great for flipping back and forth with. You have an "ah-ha" moment and skip back several pages and reread something you misunderstood on a first read-through. It's somehow clunky and takes you out of the flow when you do it in a video. Critically, you can read/listen to something and come away with the false impression you understand it. Sitting down and doing problem is .. not always fun.. but can be critical for the concepts to sink in. I think this is the main point of what you're saying I could see in the future it being something like watching a video and then doing a programming exercise
    • threatofrain 3y ago
      Note that 3B1B often warns you that his videos bring perspective for a book/class that you're doing or are already done with. And Khan Academy's focus is for K-12. If you want anything past Analysis 1 I think you'll find that universities guard their content.
      • da39a3ee 3y ago
        > If you want anything past Analysis 1 I think you'll find that universities guard their content. Not so; there's an absolutely vast amount of freely available undergraduate mathematics resources available at all levels. Honestly, so much that it makes it confusing to choose and not get distracted by the options -- perhaps AI-mediated distillation could be helpful in the future.
  • andyferris 3y ago
    Hmm - I do wonder if for very particular things in physics their heyday has come and gone? Were there more ridiculously talented inviduals deeply steeped in classical mechanics and discussing amongst themselves in the past? I feel modern physicists move onto high-energy phyics or low-energy physics research pretty early in their careers...
  • mnl 3y ago
    There are excellent textbooks on Classical Mechanics, probably because it's a crystal clear subject and you can give a detailed account of the essentials in a single volume without handwaving. Of course everything can be improved, but it also can be muddled. If it works think twice before fixing it. Kind of what happens with Rudin and introductory Real Analysis. On the other hand, there's for instance Optics where you basically have to condense an encyclopaedia and there's always prettier pictures. Or Thermodynamics, Fluid Mechanics etc that can be taught in different ways depending on the curriculum. There definitely should be pedagogical considerations in higher education, that's lacking because it's usually an afterthought. And it also should be very clear to people getting into higher education that at some later point pedagogy must end and you have to be capable of working your way through the material.
    • contrarian1234 3y ago
      I think you have the perspective of somehow who's succeeded in Physics. In your typical introductory physics class less than half the students will walk away with a very solid understanding of classical mechanics. To my mind, if the textbook was actually excellent then that would be 80%+. We're nowhere near there. I think there is LOT of room for improvement But sure.. Thermodynamics.. things could be worse :) Sometimes things are just hard because they're complicated and you need to buckle down and learn your multiplication tables. But at least in my own life experience, the vast majority of the time things are a problem because their poorly explained - often by people that poorly understand it themselves. Once you truly understand something inside and out - and look back on it - it all generally looks relatively simple. But it takes a special talent to be able to go back and reexplain it from the naiive perspective
      • mnl 3y ago
        I almost wrote above that, to my knowledge and IMVHO, no one has succeeded at writing a book on Thermodynamics yet. I self-censored because that would be too flippant, wouldn't it? Lmao
        • rawgabbit 3y ago
  • starcraft2wol 3y ago
    > people continue to find new and better ways to explain and illustrate concepts I strongly disagree. All the best math and CS books I have are old. New books about old topics tend to be less informed about the context and core ideas that led to their development.
    • da39a3ee 3y ago
      Then you are objectively wrong. Look at Grant Sanderson's explanation of introductory Linear Algebra. Very obviously it adds something good to complement the best paper textbooks on the subject.
  • cyberax 3y ago
    > Have you looked at for instance Khan Academy's Grant Sanderson (aka 3Blue1Brown) Math videos? it's really apparent there is a LOT of room for improvement in pedagogy. There is a study showing that you actually understand material better, if you use the most primitive methods: chalkboard and a lecture. Because you are forced to visualize the material yourself, instead of being presented with a ready-made animation. It probably makes sense to use visual aids for students that just can't grasp the concept, but I believe this will only help in elementary math.
    • fn-mote 3y ago
      1. I think the research shows that increasing the cognitive load increases the retention. So in general, when it is harder to learn something, you retain it better. 2. When I struggle with books it is because they do not present the motivation behind what they are doing. Videos and "more popular" articles can both provide the big-picture motivation and overview. Sometimes, you have to construct a motivation for yourself, based on what you read. That's hard. Maybe you even invent something new in order to understand a concept better. This approach is slow, though. It's easier if someone explains to you why a certain concept is "hard" or a point of view from which the concept is "easy". 3. I think students who build on a partial understanding are not going to have a better time with videos. They are in greater need of learning how to learn something than they are of facts, but school does not teach that skill (afaik).
    • WalterBright 3y ago
      I've suggested to college students that they leave their laptops behind and attend lecture with pen and notebook, and take notes. It makes things a lot more sticky in the mind. And do the homework problems. You'll never understand the material without doing the problem sets.
  • bigbacaloa 3y ago
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• washadjeffmad 3y ago
  I had a 1930s edition of a "radio physics" textbook as a child, and because there could be no prior assumptions about exposure or familiarity, it was filled with very complex ideas explained so cohesively and coherently that, well, I could understand. The author knew that this book was for people who might be as involved in the business of radio as its science or engineering, so they wrote as much about the application across every industry, breaking down the systems to the component level and manufacturers, deployment, and ordering, as they did the design and theory. I learned how to evaluate a textbook from its structure and style. It certainly wasn't designed for discrete lessons, and the professor would have needed a diverse and practical understanding to teach it effectively.
  • BenjiWiebe 3y ago
    I'd like to know which book it was.
  • narrator 3y ago
    Do you have any ore information on that book? I would like to dig it up at a local library. Is is this one perhaps? https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.16412/page/n9/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.16412/page/n9/mode/2up
  • commandlinefan 3y ago
    > complex ideas explained so cohesively I wonder if the same thing isn't happening with computer science. When I started studying the topic in the late 80's, I was part of the earliest generation that actually did, and everything seemed to be explicitly written with the goal of making sense. Some things (like recursion and pointers) were fundamentally complicated, but they were made as simple as they reasonably could be. My son is studying computer science in college right now and I look at the way they present the material and it often seems designed to confuse - I'll read it over and then explain it to him the way _I_ was taught it and he'll say, "oh my gosh, why don't they explain it that way?"
    • Raidion 3y ago
      I feel like teaching is mostly a one size fits all endeavor, but people learn and think in different ways, just like a processor is optimized for some operations but not others. Take simple arithmetic like 12x17. Some people do the long form multiplication (carry the one..), some people say it's 12x10+12x7. Some remember 12x12 from times tables and go 12x12+12x5. Some people make it 24x8+12 => 48x4+12 => 50x4-8+12 etc. Some do it on the abacus in their heads. All valid, though some are slightly more optimal than others. Good teachers empower alternative solutions and try to help people connect what they already know to what they already understand.
• marcosdumay 3y ago
  The problem is that there is no good textbook for Classical Mechanics out there. At least not on an introductory level. It's funny that for the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th one physicists were so eager to simplify and generalize their knowledge. With the side-effect of learning quite a few surprising things from the work. And yet for almost a century the goal is explicitly the opposite. (It's almost like if Academia is in crisis...)
  • mnl 3y ago
    I learnt a lot of physics from Marion's 2nd edition (not SR there though). An older and completely forgotten fine textbook is W. Hauser's Introduction to the Principles of Mechanics. Then you jump into Goldstein (the 1980 one, again not SR there). It's a good idea to buy any Schaum book from Spiegel about this too, also for vector analysis if you can't take a course on that.
    • marcosdumay 3y ago
      Yeah, in retrospect, I've set myself for failure with that universal claim. But the proof of failure is instructive :)
  • elteto 3y ago
    Taylor’s is fairly “introductory” and it’s fantastic. Very well written.
  • dustingetz 3y ago
    No Bullshit guide to Math and Physics https://minireference.com/ https://minireference.com/ (serious reply, if it's insufficient for a freshman course i propose following up with Feynman https://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed-set/dp/0465023827/ https://www.amazon.com/Feynman-Lectures-Physics-boxed-set/dp..., any objections?)
  • jasomill 3y ago
    While not exactly "introductory" in terms of mathematical prerequisites, Spivak's Mechanics I[1] is an interesting take on the subject, with extensive historical references if you're in to that sort of thing. [1] https://archive.org/details/physics-for-mathematicians-mechanics-spivak https://archive.org/details/physics-for-mathematicians-mecha...
• hoseja 3y ago
  The problem is that the pedagogy, as in, the best most effective way to teach people things, should improve massively in 70 years. Whether it actually does, that is another question.
  • housecarpenter 3y ago
    Should it really though? Maybe pedagogy is just hard and we can't expect constant progress.
    • peterbell_nyc 3y ago
      Pedagogy, like any other field is constantly developing. We are continually learning new and better ways to teach materials and thus I think the continued evolution of teaching materials has the potential to be a good thing (and I've created curriculum for professional learning, for grad school and for bootcamps). It is true that just because a book in newer it is not necessarily pedagogically better It is also true that a poor selection of content or understanding by the author could doom a book even with better pedagogy. All that said, I love the idea of OSS books/exercises for teaching - I don't know if a sufficiently engaged and competent (domain + pedagogy) would evolve around and/all of them, but it'd be a fine experiment to try! It would also be great training material for LLMs to help them to tutor using more thoughtful metaphors and examples.
      • irchans 3y ago
        I think that researching pedagogy is very difficult, and, like many scientific fields, it is hard to reproduce results found in papers. (I am not an expert in this area -- I am just a former teacher with around 10 years teaching experience.) One of the main things I notice is that standardized test scores are not really improving. I think that high school students today would score about the same as high school students in the 1980's if they were given the same multiple choice tests. This implies to me that the field has not advanced a lot. I do think that LLMs and other computer based teaching could help.
  • BobaFloutist 3y ago
• sheepshear 3y ago
  Your response does a pretty good job demonstrating the internal challenges universities face. The interest in making a change was motivated by unmet needs, and it's not going away until those needs are met. The only way to deal with people who won't meaningfully engage in the problem solving process is to go around them.
  • mnl 3y ago
    A textbook should be provided for reference. Copying its contents on a blackboard isn't teaching. You still have to design your course. There's goals to meet, you have to evaluate where your students come from and your job is getting them there. Besides pedagogy, in college you have to respect your students as studying adults and give them a proper bibliography, emphasizing references for independent study if they don't like your lecture notes, nor your approach, nor whatever. I understand what a university is, I also understand and am qualified in secondary education and it would be incredibly depressing turning colleges into extended high schools because of business models. That would be exploiting students, I never agree with that.
    • sheepshear 3y ago
      I actually completely agree with everything you wrote. I'm also very familiar with the ongoing battle between education and training. What I'm talking about is expanding options to meet additional education needs. Since universities are a shared resource, any solution must be carefully designed to preserve the ability to continue providing existing services. That's difficult to achieve, so I understand the obstructionist response. All I'm saying is that if you position yourself as an obstructionist, don't be surprised when you're treated like one.
      • mnl 3y ago
        I'm very adaptable nowadays. It's just that I think I know which things should work, but I'm not fighting society, particularly not on this. The thing with giving the public what they want and being too much of a pragmatist is that we've seen it before. Consider Western universities in the 17th century, they were still there churning out degrees, but modern science, mathematics and technology developed elsewhere.
• lanstin 3y ago
  I took Lebesgue integration and some pretty high powered group theory classes in the 1989s and am retaking them now, and I have to say the presentation now is much better. I think having Terrence Tao blog about how stuff really works makes a difference, at least for lower level grad classes. :) and trying to present groups as the widely useful abstractions they are instead of just a cute self contained theory makes a difference. Interesting to note we haven’t got a text book for these classes just lecture notes and a number of text books recommended if we want additional presentations.