> > Do your students really learn about 500 or 800 pages long books to > > exam? (We have usualy 4-5 exams in one semester.) Sorry if this > > question is stupid ..... > > Big +1 to that. This is why the two books I've published (e.g., this
To be fair to the textbook authors in this case, much of this is driven by marketing and/or students who are not optimally prepared for calculus. And this is not a slam on the students, either; rather, it is (as far as I can tell) largely a cultural factor that "math is hard, and hence must be made palatable" rather than "math is hard, but no more so than any other worthwhile thing". And of course the visualization is very important for many people (faculty too!) so we have good graphics, and many exercises, and so on, much of which can be (*can* be) better than what a harried instructor has time to concoct. Although I personally enjoy the *good* examples; honestly, I think it would be irresponsible to ask someone taking calculus as a pre- physical-therapy student (which ours are required to, for good biomechanical reasons) to learn from a definition-theorem book. This student needs to understand force/time curves, possibly dosing things, and the concepts of calculus; a physics student needs that but also tons of practical computation techniques, the math major needs at least some proofs, the econ major needs marginal cost and complementary commodities... and then marketing decisions are made to try to sell one book for *all* these constituencies. I do agree that there is often unnecessary window-dressing (such as irrelevant 'historical connections' in one book I've used), but it's an oversimplification to lay all the blame at its feet. Perhaps interactive free texts (or cheap ones; see the MAA's Moore/Smith 2nd ed. textbook) are one way to get away from this. - kcrisman -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-edu" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-edu?hl=en.
