Are Newer Textbooks More Like Magazines than Educational Tools?

[The Rev]

I'm 38 and I just became reinterested in math as a hobby. I've bought a few textbooks on Ebay to catch up the things I learned 20+ years ago in High School, and I'm just floored by the new texts.

Is it just me, or is reading a textbook that's recently published feel like you're reading a super-PC version of People Magazine? (Sometimes, it takes awhile just to find the content through all the fluff.)

\infty

The Rev

 

[juvenal]

I prefer US Weekly myself.

I think the same can be said of mags like Newsweek and Time. It's about the colorful pictures now.

But once you get past high school or even some freshman year college textbooks - things are as dull in presentation as ever - at least in physics.

 

[JasonRox]

Tell me about it.

Examples and junk all over the place.

 

[Norman]

Examples?... ah... yes, I remember textbooks that have examples in them, I miss them. Oh well I guess. And yes, as juvenal has already said, textbooks in physics are as bland as they have always been in physics and I am guessing the same in other subjects.
Cheers and good luck in the textbook search.

 

[ptex]

Well at least your not being told which books to buy based on some sort of school politics or based on which books your Professor has written and needs to sell.

 

[The Rev]

I prefer US Weekly myself.

I think the same can be said of mags like Newsweek and Time. It's about the colorful pictures now.

But once you get past high school or even some freshman year college textbooks - things are as dull in presentation as ever - at least in physics.

Thank God. When I went looking for a Trig book, I made sure to get one published in the '80s. Nice and monochromatic. No social history worked in. No pictures from movies to keep in fun. Just boring old equations and math in their pristine, undisturbed beauty.

\pi

The Rev

 

[The Rev]

Well at least your not being told which books to buy based on some sort of school politics or based on which books your Professor has written and needs to sell.

Don't even get me started. It's obscene enough to rewrite history books to fit the current political cause celebre. When they start doing it to math books, then I have to call my lawyer; cus dat's jus wrong, biatch!

\phi

The Rev

 

[JasonRox]

Don't even get me started. It's obscene enough to rewrite history books to fit the current political cause celebre. When they start doing it to math books, then I have to call my lawyer; cus dat's jus wrong, biatch!

\phi

The Rev

I thought you were 38?

 

[The Rev]

I am. I'm just getting back into math as a hobby. (Don't let my use of the word "biatch" throw you off ).

\infty

The Rev

 

[franznietzsche]

Well at least your not being told which books to buy based on some sort of school politics or based on which books your Professor has written and needs to sell.

Hehe, our entire first year course uses the book written by one of our faculty.