gleem said:
Based on the general approach to the presentation of the material is a cacophony of multicolored text, pictures, notes, exercises, examples, directions, URL references, and QR codes directing the student to online help and assessment.
Wait till you read what I have to write. I was reading, Spacetime and Geometry, by Sean M Carroll. See post 15. The textbook was written for readers in their first years of graduate study in physics, typically 23-24 year old adults, who are likely in their top form in intellectual prowess, like strong young lions. You expect the book to be no-nonsense, and it is not a bad book, although it borrows much of it's material from Wald's textbook, which is harder.
Anyway, it occurred to me all of a sudden that I was overlooking something. Many books use bold faced type to denote vectors. Indeed, at one time, before advances in typography due to computer word processing, many scientists and mathematicians and researchers used tilda's over vectors to indicate to the typesetter to use bold-faced type before sending the manuscript off for publication.
Back to the main point, throughout the textbook, the "important words" are put in bold faced type for the reader. On page 29, "Maxwell's Equations" is put in bold faced type. Skipping over many other bold words, page 37 emboldens "Lagrangian" and "Lagrange's equations". Page 59 contains both bold, "Diffeomorphic" and "open ball"
Really, does anybody thing the top students studying relativity in the country/ and world at the peak of their intellectual prowess are going to overlook such concepts because the words were not distinguished by boldfaced type? Does the publisher consider boldfaced type a "grabber" where the consumer is willing to pay a little extra for a book so equipped? Does anyone know what's going on here?
I remember about 15 years ago, my grand nephew, about grad-stduent age now, had an assignment in elementary school to color the nouns red and the verbs green in a number of sentences. I was perplexed at such an english assignment. No wonder he did not like English in school. When my neice told me her son was going to have to miss part of school the next day, I wryly suggested, he was going to miss out on the day to color the verbs red and the nouns green. Maybe the current textbooks are a holdover from these early lessons.
I taught physics recitation and labs for around 6 years in the 1980's and I heard more than a few excuses for late assighments or bad test performance. I have never heard the excuse that the textbook did not use pretty colors or bold-faced type to distinguish the important ideas. Are top books in Surgery, Immunology, and or Law also so prettified?
