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Just for interest. We covered part of this material to a similar level in high school in Australia in the early 1980s along with Calculus, probability and stat

Just for interest. We covered part of this material to a similar level in high school in Australia in the early 1980s along with Calculus, probability and statistics. In the math II/III streams ("advanced" for those wanting to do Enginering, Medicine, STEM, hard trades courses that need a grasp of math, etc). This was a public high school in a remote area BTW, which I attended pretty much straight off an outback cattle station. It's my understanding the US doesn't tackle any of this, nor Calculus, until undergraduate university. Other countries address similar material (eg abstract algebra) in high school. The full text is a bit OTT for high school (as I experienced it in Australia), but a good chunk wouldn't have been out of place, I and many of my peers would have happily read it as an extra curicular interest.

cess11 1y ago
Ninth grade introduced me to algebra and my 'technical' high school program spent a lot of resources teaching calculus and algebra. I also opted into all the other math courses they had, doing discrete math, complex numbers and stochastic math. I didn't have points to put into taking it but the school also offered a course on modern physics, teaching stuff like field equations and quantum mysteries. One of my adolescence girlfriends left Russia after fifth grade and had an introduction to both algebra and some discrete math there.
redczar 1y ago
I’m speaking from the perspective of the U.S. I still contend though that the vast majority of people ages 12 - 18 are incapable of learning this book. Note that I’m talking about this book as it is in it’s totality. This book includes counting principles in it so one can always claim that aspects of this book can be taught to people between ages of 12 - 18. We do teach people how to count at a young age. The subject matter is such that one can introduce concepts from this book in grades 7 - 12 but not at the depth the book covers them. Calculus is taught in most high schools in the U.S. but very few students take calculus in high school.
- defrost 1y ago
  > the vast majority of people ages 12 - 18 are incapable of learning this book. Sure. That doesn't prevent it being a high school text taught in some high school streams though. Math I was taught to bulk of upper school students in Australia (in years 11 and 12), Math II/III was taught to those students interested in STEM at a university, Math IV was remedial math to bolster the poorer math students that didn't exactly pick up primary school math. Again, it's similar in depth to how I was taught math in high school and how my peers were taught in high school, but I guess we were more math orientated than others. * What makes it not a high school text (for advanced high school students here) is length rather than depth, while a breadth of math subjects were introduced along with concepts such as proof, reasoning, various notations, etc it was uncommon for a single subject such as discrete mathematics to be dealt with at great length, perhaps a third of the material presented here at a similar depth would be more common (again, for some high school students, not all high school students). * eg: https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/j.gauntlett https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/j.gauntlett , https://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/tschmah/ https://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/tschmah/ , https://hpi.uq.edu.au/profile/388/dominic-hyde https://hpi.uq.edu.au/profile/388/dominic-hyde are three of the people in my very small (12 in total) first year university math class who all had texts not disimilar to this in their senior math streams at their various high schools at the same time I attended high school. The entire group of twelve are not dissimilar.
  - redczar 1y ago
    Length + depth determines the appropriateness of a book at a given level. They go hand in hand and my comment was about this book. Not 1 or 2 chapters of it and not 1 or 2 chapters of it dumbed down a bit.
    - defrost 1y ago
      Again, while part of the book might be presented in a high school courses I took, a number of students that took such courses would read the entire book out of interest. I'm unsure how you were taught but we in Australia frequently had textbooks that were only partially taught in high school, leaving the rest as untested and for interest. This, as I'm sure you follow, means it would be fine as a text book despite only part of the text being taught. Many of my peers were recommended a list of texts to read in high school that were never fomally taught in high school. A couple of people that were in our circle at that time read such things before high school.

cess11 1y ago

Ninth grade introduced me to algebra and my 'technical' high school program spent a lot of resources teaching calculus and algebra. I also opted into all the other math courses they had, doing discrete math, complex numbers and stochastic math. I didn't have points to put into taking it but the school also offered a course on modern physics, teaching stuff like field equations and quantum mysteries. One of my adolescence girlfriends left Russia after fifth grade and had an introduction to both algebra and some discrete math there.

redczar 1y ago

I’m speaking from the perspective of the U.S. I still contend though that the vast majority of people ages 12 - 18 are incapable of learning this book. Note that I’m talking about this book as it is in it’s totality. This book includes counting principles in it so one can always claim that aspects of this book can be taught to people between ages of 12 - 18. We do teach people how to count at a young age. The subject matter is such that one can introduce concepts from this book in grades 7 - 12 but not at the depth the book covers them. Calculus is taught in most high schools in the U.S. but very few students take calculus in high school.

defrost 1y ago
> the vast majority of people ages 12 - 18 are incapable of learning this book. Sure. That doesn't prevent it being a high school text taught in some high school streams though. Math I was taught to bulk of upper school students in Australia (in years 11 and 12), Math II/III was taught to those students interested in STEM at a university, Math IV was remedial math to bolster the poorer math students that didn't exactly pick up primary school math. Again, it's similar in depth to how I was taught math in high school and how my peers were taught in high school, but I guess we were more math orientated than others. * What makes it not a high school text (for advanced high school students here) is length rather than depth, while a breadth of math subjects were introduced along with concepts such as proof, reasoning, various notations, etc it was uncommon for a single subject such as discrete mathematics to be dealt with at great length, perhaps a third of the material presented here at a similar depth would be more common (again, for some high school students, not all high school students). * eg: https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/j.gauntlett https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/j.gauntlett , https://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/tschmah/ https://mysite.science.uottawa.ca/tschmah/ , https://hpi.uq.edu.au/profile/388/dominic-hyde https://hpi.uq.edu.au/profile/388/dominic-hyde are three of the people in my very small (12 in total) first year university math class who all had texts not disimilar to this in their senior math streams at their various high schools at the same time I attended high school. The entire group of twelve are not dissimilar.
- redczar 1y ago
  Length + depth determines the appropriateness of a book at a given level. They go hand in hand and my comment was about this book. Not 1 or 2 chapters of it and not 1 or 2 chapters of it dumbed down a bit.
  - defrost 1y ago
    Again, while part of the book might be presented in a high school courses I took, a number of students that took such courses would read the entire book out of interest. I'm unsure how you were taught but we in Australia frequently had textbooks that were only partially taught in high school, leaving the rest as untested and for interest. This, as I'm sure you follow, means it would be fine as a text book despite only part of the text being taught. Many of my peers were recommended a list of texts to read in high school that were never fomally taught in high school. A couple of people that were in our circle at that time read such things before high school.