Why are textbooks in math and science so bad?

[leright]

I find that books written by mathematicians and physicists are generally not that bad. Even the ones students think are bad.

Engineers, on the other hand, usually can't write a book to save their lives! I have never seen books written so bad as the engineering books I've been forced to use recently. I am currently being forced to use a book on solid state engineering that is SO bad I almost can't believe it. The grammar is mangled, notation is not used consistently, (the greek letters nu and upsilon are interchanged randomly in places since they both "look like" a v) and many problems require information found many chapters later in the book. Another annoying thing is that the dot product is written as a period (yes, a '.'!) throughout the book! ("a.b") The author also drew springs by hand with a mouse and put them in as figures. (It seriously looks like she used MSPaint.)

I know that paragraph up there was whiny. But I really needed to vent. :) The "crap" that Physicists and Mathematicians put out is GOLD compared to what engineers are capable of.

There are a few exceptions, of course, like the wonderful Engineering Circuit Analysis by Hayt/Kemmerly/Durbin.

What solid state book are you using? Most solid state devices courses use Streetman, which I think is a fine textbook, but I will say a lot of the stuff in there takes a while to digest, but I think that's more because of the subject matter than the book.

 

[WolfOfTheSteps]

What solid state book are you using? Most solid state devices courses use Streetman, which I think is a fine textbook, but I will say a lot of the stuff in there takes a while to digest, but I think that's more because of the subject matter than the book.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0387281525/?tag=pfamazon01-20 by Razeghi. Just check out the link to see the Amazon reviews.

It's written by a professor at my school, and I think that's the only reason we use it. No teacher would objectively choose this book for a course. There is no editor listed in the front, either. By the look of it, I am sure it is unedited.

I know the subject matter is dense. I'm willing to put in the work. But when you have to do so with a book like this, it makes you feel like jumping off the nearest bridge.

This is not a solid state devices course, btw. It's an "intro to solid state" course in the EE department. (ABET classified as 90% science) So it's sort of like a watered down physics course. I noticed that almost all intro to solid state books are written by physicists, not engineers. Probably just as they should be!

 

[WolfOfTheSteps]

Oh, and I do supplement my reading with Solid state books written by physicists. I wouldn't survive otherwise. I can do the problems in the physics books too...

But the homeworks are in the class book, and it takes forever just to figure out what they are asking. BTW, if you are good with solid state, I had a question right out of the book I am talking about that I was struggling with. https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=169078" No one has answered yet. :)

 

[kant]

No one said that its equivalent. However SOMETIMES it is NECESSARY to read a hard text to learn what we want to learn.

i agree that it is necessary, but i think it need not be.

But sometimes mathematical ideas are not simple. Sometimes they are complicated and really hard to get across.

Maybe not.

Well I don't know about you but I cannot usually solve problems without reading first. Sometimes I have to read a lot before I can solve any problems.

What is your point? Remember, i only said, a lot of textbooks are bad.

If you want people to stop making statements such as the one about pearls of wisdom you have got to stop stupid statements. I have never had a professor who told me that reading books sucks or that there are too many that are bad.

Do you want to provoke me? I will say this again. My only comment is that most textbooks suck. I never said reading books suck, but i did say many textbooks suck. Do i think it is necessary to read textbooks? Yes. You can quote me on this point. I am not even going to reply to your other comments because it is pure garbage. You seem to make up stuff as you go.

 

[kant]

good. you're supposed to have to go to lectures. a decent textbook is not one for you to self learn from. it is to back up the course. you make it sound like a bad thing that you had to do what you were supposed to and go to the lectures.

Textbooks are written fro brevity and concision. proofs will be quick. plus, you've got to remember that how you write something in a book is in the reverse order from which you discover it. this means that motivation and explanation are ferquently omitted from books. but won't be in lectures. anyway - why did it suck? because you didn't understand it? have you learned how to read a maths textbook? do you have the right expectations of it? From your comment above, the answer appears to be 'no'.

I think the reason might be that the material in the textbook are not self contain enough so that one can self learn the stuff without the professor. perhaps that is one reason. It shouldn t be that way.

 

[matt grime]

I think the reason might be that the material in the textbook are not self contain enough so that one can self learn the stuff without the professor. perhaps that is one reason. It shouldn t be that way.

If you don't have the prerequisites for the book, then why did you buy it? If you have bought the inappropriate book for your level of knowledge that is your fault.

If you want every textbook to cover every digression and prerequisite books will be thousands of pages long, and no one would want to write one. But since you think professors have nothing better to do with their time than to write spoon-feeding books for you, you probably don't think that is a problem.

 

[hrc969]

i agree that it is necessary, but i think it need not be.

I said sometimes it is necessary.

Maybe not.

What do you mean maybe not? You just seems to be trying to disagree here. It seems that you are not only willing to be wrong but also actively trying to be wrong.

What is your point? Remember, i only said, a lot of textbooks are bad.

What does what you said about textbooks have to do with anything. You said reading distracts from solving problems. My point is: How do you expect to solve non-trivial problems without reading or with very little reading?

Do you want to provoke me?

I want you to back up your statement or shut up.

My only comment is that most textbooks suck.

Is that is? How do you get informations on MOST textbooks?

I never said reading books suck, but i did say many textbooks suck.

No you only said that if I wanted to read hard texts I should be an english major.

Do i think it is necessary to read textbooks? Yes.

Except you don't want to put in the time necessary to read textbooks right?

I am not even going to reply to your other comments because it is pure garbage. You seem to make up stuff as you go.

I have made nothing up.
I talk to Elman a lot and the thing about how many books I have you could easily verify by asking my classmates (if you knew who they were) and we have talked about it in Elman's office hours. You could ask Elman if he knows anyone with that many books. But that's really besides the point and I don't really care if you believe me. I'm just trying to help you here. If you are so convinced that most of the books that are used in your classes are bad then you won't learn as much as you can from them. If I can get you to change your mind and get you to start looking for good things about a book or look for what you can learn from it rather than looking at it and saying it is bad then you'll get much more out of your UCLA mathematics education. I used to despise the idea of going to UCLA (back when I was in 9th grade, I don't even remember why anymore) But now that I have experience the mathematics education here, I think this was the best place for me to come. There are a lot of great professor here who can help you learn but it does come at the price of putting in time. It really isn't all that bad.
If you would put your focus on learning rather than whining than you'd have a much better experience.

Anyways, I don't care if you do this or not, I am just suggesting it for your own good and only you can decide whether you want to do it or not:
Go talk to Elman (office is at MS 5328) and ask him about books about mathematics education especially at the upper division level.

Again I would really like to have a discussion on Gamelin's book. I know that book really well, I used it when I took the class from Mess and when I took one from Gamelin.

Also I think Matt Grime made a very good point. If you want to get the most out of a book then you should have all the required prerequisites. Also sometimes there are things that are not prerequisites but do enhance your ability to understand a certain subject. For example, you took Complex Analysis (132) before Real Anlysis (131AB). Now you don't absolutely need Real Analysis to do Complex Analysis but it does make it easier to understand chapter 2 of Gamelin's book you are confortable with the ideas reviewed in the first section of that chapter.

Oh and just as an interesting (at least to me it is interesting) one of the classic textbooks in Complex Anlysis is one by Lars Ahlfors. Now this is not one of my favorite texts. I don't think its bad but it is not one of the first ones I look at when I want to find something. Its probably the 15th or something. The reason I did not find this book enjoyable is because in my eyes it wastes way too much time developing prerequisites that I already know. Trying to read past that it may refer to specific things from the chapters on "prerequisites". I found it really annoying to go back and try to figure out what he was talking about. Now if I did not have access to other books with a different format then I would not cast this book aside as one of my least favorite. I do understand that its a book that was written many years ago and maybe students would not have take things such as topology before taking complex analysis (maybe I don't really know) but for the same reason I rather read a book written with people like me in mind. But given that there are books that jump straight into complex analysis assuming that you've had the required prerequisites I prefer those. Some people that have taken 132 and look at the book used for the graduate course (246A) that a large part of Gamelin's beginning is skipped. Some people like that (such as me) some people don't. Fortunately there are books for many kinds of people.

I will also add that when I took 132 from Mess I was really happy that Gamelin had the beginning of his book as he did. I had not taken real analysis either. I was taking it at the same time and sometimes I saw the same idea in the same day in different contexts and I thought that was pretty cool. But it did mean that I had to work a lot harder then some of my classmates. Not only did I have Mess but I was in the first quarter of my second year with some people in there (seniors and a grad student) being very familiar with real analysis. But now that I am past that stage Gamelin's book would not be my book of choice. Again different books are good for different people.

I am just trying to share my experience at UCLA with you (a fellow Bruin) in hope that you might get something better than what you seem to be on the path to getting out of it right now.

Also if you need help planning out your future schedule I can help you with that. I can help you with the order in which you should take classes to get more out of them.

EDIT:A little more about my experience with prerequisites:
One of the reasons that I struggled with manifolds for so long was that I did not have certain prerequisites. For examples, a lot of books' first(or near first) sentence (in the first chapter) starts "Let X be a Hausdorff topological space...". Now I started reading about manifolds in winter 06 and did not take topology until spring 06. So just in trying to read the first sentance of some of these books I was already stuck. I had to check out some topology books and read those for a while and then continue. There are some books which have an appendix on topology but as if almost always stated (by the author) they cannot replace a book on topology. The point is having the adequate prerequisites is very important in trying to read books. I could have very well come on PF and complained that the books I was looking at were bad because they just said that X was a Hausdorff topological space without telling me what it meant to be a topological space or what it meant for it to be Hausdorff. However instead I used my time to go look at some other books which definitely told me what those meant.
I would also like to point out that if you look at UCLA general catalog and go to the Mathematics section it does not say that topology(121) is a prerequisite for manifolds theory (225A) and it really isn't you can learn what you need while taking the class but just as 131A was not a prerequisite for 132, you spend less time struggling through things that some of your classmantes will already have seen if you have taken (or studied) it before.

 

[mathwonk]

hrc, actually your edition of ahlfors was written more recently, when they decided to stick topology in as a preparation topic. if you go back to the first edition you will not find that section cluttering up the beginning.

this illustrates unfortunately the posters point, math books get worse every time they are reissued. so the ones with the most editions, like thomas calculus, are the absolute worst.

 

[hrc969]

hrc, actually your edition of ahlfors was written more recently, when they decided to stick topology in as a preparation topic. if you go back to the first edition you will not find that section cluttering up the beginning.

Yeah, I have the third edition. But its still pretty old (1979). At least compared to my favorite Complex Analysis book (also in its third edition): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0821839624/?tag=pfamazon01-20.

this illustrates unfortunately the posters point, math books get worse every time they are reissued.

Well this is not always true. Krantz book on Several Complex Variables got a lot better for the second edition (it was pretty much impossible for it to get worse, he wrote the first edition (shortly) after failing to get tenure at UCLA so I guess he wasn't in the best of conditions). Also Grenne and Krantz's book is better than in the first edition. (Partly due to Boas I guess)

But maybe if they put out more editions they start getting worse every edition)

so the ones with the most editions, like thomas calculus, are the absolute worst.

I thought everyone loved Thomas Calculus! Although a lot of professor do say to get and older edition and not the newest. In particular they say to get a Thomas Calculus rather than a Thomas and Finney.

 

[mathwonk]

I think this thread may benefit from the advice of a better master than me.

"Whenever we are tempted to complain that our search after the truth that we desire so much is proving vain, - instead of so complaining, our first duty is to look into our souls and find whether the craving in the heart is real. Then in the vast majority of cases, it will be discovered that we were not fit to receive the truth.

There are still greater dangers in regard to the transmitter, the guru. There are many who, though immersed in ignorance, yet in the pride of their hearts, fancy they know everything and not only do not stop there, but offer to take others on their shoulders; and thus the blind leading the blind, both fall into the ditch.

To convey such an impulse to any soul, in the first place the soul from which it proceeds must possesses the power of transmitting it,as it were to another; and in the second place, the soul to which it is transmitted must be fit to receive it. The seed must be a living seed, and the field must be ready ploughed. and when both these conditions are fulfilled a wonderful growth ...takes place." Vivekananda.

 

[kant]

If you don't have the prerequisites for the book, then why did you buy it? If you have bought the inappropriate book for your level of knowledge that is your fault.

If you want every textbook to cover every digression and prerequisite books will be thousands of pages long, and no one would want to write one. But since you think professors have nothing better to do with their time than to write spoon-feeding books for you, you probably don't think that is a problem.

It goes without saying that the person who bought the book should have the prerequisites courses done, but perhaps there are certain "tricks" that are not cover in the standard prerequisite courses. What happens than?

Don t put works in my mouth. I am not saying reading a math books should be easy, but there should be a more easilar, efficient way of writing it. I like the advice of my english 101 professor, thy should always know one s audience.

 

[kant]

I said sometimes it is necessary.

What do you mean maybe not? You just seems to be trying to disagree here. It seems that you are not only willing to be wrong but also actively trying to be wrong.



What does what you said about textbooks have to do with anything. You said reading distracts from solving problems. My point is: How do you expect to solve non-trivial problems without reading or with very little reading?


I want you to back up your statement or shut up.

Is that is? How do you get informations on MOST textbooks?
No you only said that if I wanted to read hard texts I should be an english major.
Except you don't want to put in the time necessary to read textbooks right?
I have made nothing up.
I talk to Elman a lot and the thing about how many books I have you could easily verify by asking my classmates (if you knew who they were) and we have talked about it in Elman's office hours. You could ask Elman if he knows anyone with that many books. But that's really besides the point and I don't really care if you believe me. I'm just trying to help you here. If you are so convinced that most of the books that are used in your classes are bad then you won't learn as much as you can from them. If I can get you to change your mind and get you to start looking for good things about a book or look for what you can learn from it rather than looking at it and saying it is bad then you'll get much more out of your UCLA mathematics education. I used to despise the idea of going to UCLA (back when I was in 9th grade, I don't even remember why anymore) But now that I have experience the mathematics education here, I think this was the best place for me to come. There are a lot of great professor here who can help you learn but it does come at the price of putting in time. It really isn't all that bad.
If you would put your focus on learning rather than whining than you'd have a much better experience.

Anyways, I don't care if you do this or not, I am just suggesting it for your own good and only you can decide whether you want to do it or not:
Go talk to Elman (office is at MS 5328) and ask him about books about mathematics education especially at the upper division level.

Again I would really like to have a discussion on Gamelin's book. I know that book really well, I used it when I took the class from Mess and when I took one from Gamelin.

Also I think Matt Grime made a very good point. If you want to get the most out of a book then you should have all the required prerequisites. Also sometimes there are things that are not prerequisites but do enhance your ability to understand a certain subject. For example, you took Complex Analysis (132) before Real Anlysis (131AB). Now you don't absolutely need Real Analysis to do Complex Analysis but it does make it easier to understand chapter 2 of Gamelin's book you are confortable with the ideas reviewed in the first section of that chapter.

Oh and just as an interesting (at least to me it is interesting) one of the classic textbooks in Complex Anlysis is one by Lars Ahlfors. Now this is not one of my favorite texts. I don't think its bad but it is not one of the first ones I look at when I want to find something. Its probably the 15th or something. The reason I did not find this book enjoyable is because in my eyes it wastes way too much time developing prerequisites that I already know. Trying to read past that it may refer to specific things from the chapters on "prerequisites". I found it really annoying to go back and try to figure out what he was talking about. Now if I did not have access to other books with a different format then I would not cast this book aside as one of my least favorite. I do understand that its a book that was written many years ago and maybe students would not have take things such as topology before taking complex analysis (maybe I don't really know) but for the same reason I rather read a book written with people like me in mind. But given that there are books that jump straight into complex analysis assuming that you've had the required prerequisites I prefer those. Some people that have taken 132 and look at the book used for the graduate course (246A) that a large part of Gamelin's beginning is skipped. Some people like that (such as me) some people don't. Fortunately there are books for many kinds of people.

I will also add that when I took 132 from Mess I was really happy that Gamelin had the beginning of his book as he did. I had not taken real analysis either. I was taking it at the same time and sometimes I saw the same idea in the same day in different contexts and I thought that was pretty cool. But it did mean that I had to work a lot harder then some of my classmates. Not only did I have Mess but I was in the first quarter of my second year with some people in there (seniors and a grad student) being very familiar with real analysis. But now that I am past that stage Gamelin's book would not be my book of choice. Again different books are good for different people.

I am just trying to share my experience at UCLA with you (a fellow Bruin) in hope that you might get something better than what you seem to be on the path to getting out of it right now.

Also if you need help planning out your future schedule I can help you with that. I can help you with the order in which you should take classes to get more out of them.

EDIT:A little more about my experience with prerequisites:
One of the reasons that I struggled with manifolds for so long was that I did not have certain prerequisites. For examples, a lot of books' first(or near first) sentence (in the first chapter) starts "Let X be a Hausdorff topological space...". Now I started reading about manifolds in winter 06 and did not take topology until spring 06. So just in trying to read the first sentance of some of these books I was already stuck. I had to check out some topology books and read those for a while and then continue. There are some books which have an appendix on topology but as if almost always stated (by the author) they cannot replace a book on topology. The point is having the adequate prerequisites is very important in trying to read books. I could have very well come on PF and complained that the books I was looking at were bad because they just said that X was a Hausdorff topological space without telling me what it meant to be a topological space or what it meant for it to be Hausdorff. However instead I used my time to go look at some other books which definitely told me what those meant.
I would also like to point out that if you look at UCLA general catalog and go to the Mathematics section it does not say that topology(121) is a prerequisite for manifolds theory (225A) and it really isn't you can learn what you need while taking the class but just as 131A was not a prerequisite for 132, you spend less time struggling through things that some of your classmantes will already have seen if you have taken (or studied) it before.

I don't have the patience to reply to your long post. Try to summerize your main point to something that i can easly reply to. thanking you.

 

[matt grime]

Don t put works in my mouth.

The only words I put in your mouth were the ones you wrote: that research is easy, that professors have lots of free time (and presumably that writing maths is easy), thus they should find it easy to write lots of maths for you to understand easily.

There certainly do exist poor textbooks, but none of the criticisms you've levelled have displayed any sign that you appreciate what a good textbook is or what it should intend to do. You criticisms seem more like bleating about how hard you find them to understand for the wrong reasons. I can certainly cite several texts that are badly written (very poor language, riddled with mistakes) but your reasons seem far more pedestrian: assumes that the reader ought to work harder, for example, or 'means one ought to go to the lectures'. Well, you're bloody well supposed to go to the lectures; the books are there for a reference.

 

[WolfOfTheSteps]

You know what the problem is? It's not that there are no good books, it's that teachers won't choose the good books. Now, they may be busy, but they should take the time to research this.

From what I understand, most teachers get tons of books sent to them for free, and they often choose text based on a cursory glance at these free "samples." I've had profs personally tell me this is how they chose the text. Another way is that they simply use a book by a prof at the University, sort of out of courtesy. Or they use their own book (reasons for that are obvious).

This is all b.s. in my opinion. There is no way for the cream to rise to the top in this system.

I also get these teachers who complain about the text all quarter. Why are they using it in the first place?

I transferred to an "elite" University from a community college. I can tell you flat out that CC teachers are infinitely better at choosing a good book than a University prof.

Something fishy seems to be going on. Does anyone know what the deal is?

 

[morphism]

Something fishy seems to be going on. Does anyone know what the deal is?

The department could be assigning the textbooks, not the profs.

 

[TMFKAN64]

I don't have the patience to reply to your long post. Try to summerize your main point to something that i can easly reply to. thanking you.

I think this pretty much sums up the entire thread in a nutshell.

 

[Ki Man]

We should try stringing these posts together and then editing them in order to make a textbook out of it on how to properly make a textbook. with the lengths of the posts the way they are now, we'll be there in no time.

Just find a good one and stick to it. don't just blindly go around buying books, take a closer look before you invest so you don't end up wasting that $60

 

[Cincinnatus]

We should try stringing these posts together and then editing them in order to make a textbook out of it on how to properly make a textbook. with the lengths of the posts the way they are now, we'll be there in no time.

Or we'd have a horrible book catering to the lowest common denominator, wait, I thought we already had a thousand of them?

Really though, while I'm posting on this thread I'd like to mention some good books I discovered recently. When it comes to recommending math texts everyone seems to talk about the same ones. You know, everyone likes Spivak, Munkres, Rudin, maybe Apostol etc. These books show up in every thread about book recommendations.

I just recently discovered the "Princeton lectures in analysis" series which I haven't seen anyone mention on here before. It was written by Elias Stein and Rami Shakarchi. Stein at least, as far as I can tell, seems to be pretty well known...

The series is organized interestingly because they start with Fourier analysis (first volume) and use it as motivation to develop real and complex analysis in the later three volumes. Reading all four seems like it would give a pretty good foundation to understand a wide range of topics in analysis. Though I admit I've only read (most of) the first two volumes and nothing from the later books.

So I'm wondering if anyone else is familiar with this series? If so, did you like them? Here's a link https://www.amazon.com/dp/069111384X/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[mathwonk]

shakarchi and stein was the choice by the young analysts in my department for the most recent beginning grad analysis text. obvioiusly they respect stein, and presumably like the book. another recent choice by older faculty, was by wheeden and zygmund.

grad texts are an exception to the "professor hates the book" theme, since the students are strong, or expected to be, and the professor actually chooses the book. very few good undergraduate texts are being written, because people do know their audience. but lots of fine grad texts are being written because that audience is still expected to perform. still grad students also are getting more diverse in ability, or a certain lack of preparation is getting tolerated more, and grad books are hence getting more explicitly written, shall we say.

if your professor denigrates the book he is using, then you know you are in a course for less than outstanding students, where the dept forced a mediocre book on him because the students are not expected to be able to read a better one.

and you yourself also have the option of qualifying for a better course and choosing it, unless you cannot qualify, which tells you something.

 

[WolfOfTheSteps]

if your professor denigrates the book he is using, then you know you are in a course for less than outstanding students, where the dept forced a mediocre book on him because the students are not expected to be able to read a better one.

Well this is b.s.

In the math department I've noticed this to be true, but I'm an EE and I was talking about courses that absolutely every EE is required to take. There is only 1 course above freshman level which has an honors/"regular student" distinction in the EE department at my school.

And besides, one of the worst books I've ever been assigned to use was a text also used in graduate courses. If the department chose it because they thought we were "not outstanding enough" to read something better, then they were smoking crack. The book was written by a prof at the school... That's why it was chosen.

 

[hrc969]

It goes without saying that the person who bought the book should have the prerequisites courses done, but perhaps there are certain "tricks" that are not cover in the standard prerequisite courses. What happens than?

Again, sometimes the courses listed as prerequisites are not those courses such that having done those you will find everything in the class easy to do. Instead many times it is the minimum of knowledge you need to have such that you can understand most of it if you work hard enough. So yeah sometimes knowing something from a course that is not listed as a prerequisite can help, be it a trick or a standard method in a certain field.

Don t put works in my mouth. I am not saying reading a math books should be easy, but there should be a more easilar, efficient way of writing it.

Why should there be? Because YOU say so? And sometimes there is an efficient way of writing something but that way is not necessarily the one that helps you understand what's going on the best. I think that a good author will point you in the direction of the most efficient way, and will justtify why they chose a certain method. Of course probably a lot of authors don't do that.
As an example, when I was studying out of Krantz's Several Complex Variables book, he said that the best way to solve the Levi problem can be found in a book by R. Michael Range, however as it was a combination of modern techniques and classical ones it was not as instructive as the one he went on to present.

I like the advice of my english 101 professor, thy should always know one s audience.

Better yet, you should know the authors audience, that way you will know whether you are a part of it or not.

 

[WolfOfTheSteps]

Better yet, you should know the authors audience, that way you will know whether you are a part of it or not.

Most importantly, make sure the author's main audience is not his bank account.

 

[mathwonk]

indeed i was talking abut math, where you agree it is true.

but i would conjecture it is also true on EE, unless no good books exist there.

if you want to know ask your EE prof, but bear in mind what you think of as a bad book, may be subjective.

but think about the logic of your own statements. If the book has to serve all EE majors, then is it likely it is designed only for outstanding students?

I.e. then either all your EE majors are assumed outstanding, or else the failure rate should be rather high.

Which goal does your school seem to have in view?And if a book is chosen because it was written by a prof at the school, and the current prof disparages it, doesn't that say it was forced on him for reasons other than its high quality?

Oh I see, you are trying to hold onto the idea that it is not the quality of the students that motivated the choice. your idea is tht th students are wonderful, but the bad book is forced on them by a politically powerful prof wanting to make money from it.

If that is true, it seems to me grounds for a serious complaint against the department. But I have never encountered this situation in my life in academia, in over 40 years. In all that time I have been in situations only twice where books by local authors were chosen, but the argument was justifiable on merit, and the choice was not made by the authors.

really i think my quote from vivekananda applies here again.

 

[hrc969]

I don't have the patience to reply to your long post. Try to summerize your main point to something that i can easly reply to. thanking you.

Well, that would go against what I have been trying to get you to do, which is to support your assertions.

If I tell you something I would like you to read an example to give you an idea of why I said what I said.

I guess one of the main points is that just because you think a book is bad doesn't mean it is. Some people might find that book good for exactly the same reason that you find it bad.

Another point is the one about having the adequate prerequisites and listed prerequisites are not always everything you need to find the class easy.
Again I don't just want to tell you that and try to have you believe it. I gave you examples which you can go on and verify since you are at the same school as I am.

Also you don't have to reply. I just hope you have the patience to read what I posted and keep it in mind. Oh, and the tentative schedule for next year has been posted and the math department website so if you need help planning for next year feel free to PM me.

 

[hrc969]

I just recently discovered the "Princeton lectures in analysis" series which I haven't seen anyone mention on here before. It was written by Elias Stein and Rami Shakarchi. Stein at least, as far as I can tell, seems to be pretty well known...

The series is organized interestingly because they start with Fourier analysis (first volume) and use it as motivation to develop real and complex analysis in the later three volumes. Reading all four seems like it would give a pretty good foundation to understand a wide range of topics in analysis. Though I admit I've only read (most of) the first two volumes and nothing from the later books.

So I'm wondering if anyone else is familiar with this series? If so, did you like them? Here's a link https://www.amazon.com/dp/069111384X/?tag=pfamazon01-20

I am familiar with that series. The Fourier analysis one is used in a Fourier Analysis course which I was taking last year (but dropped because I was taking the graduate level complex analysis and I had to work harder than I was used to). Also I am auditing the course this year and we are using the same book. The complex analysis book was one of the recommended ones for the graduate level complex analysis (along with Ahlfors) and is the textbook that is being followed this quarter. The Real Analysis book was the assigned one for the Real Analysis graduate series (along with Folland) and though I did not take the class this year I was planning to so I went through the first chapter of that one. My opinion is that they are great books. The exercises are great if you are at the appropriate level. In particular for me it turned out that I could do a lot of the problems and enjoyed them for the Fourier and Complex analysis books. However, I was not as familiar with the Real analysis (measure theory) material so I found most of the exercises for that book very hard for me and took me a lot longer to do than for the other two books. But anyways the material is great. The measure theory is what I had to struggle the most with since it was completely new material, but I liked it. I really have no complaints about it (or any of the books).

 

[hrc969]

Well this is b.s.

In the math department I've noticed this to be true, but I'm an EE and I was talking about courses that absolutely every EE is required to take. There is only 1 course above freshman level which has an honors/"regular student" distinction in the EE department at my school.

And besides, one of the worst books I've ever been assigned to use was a text also used in graduate courses. If the department chose it because they thought we were "not outstanding enough" to read something better, then they were smoking crack. The book was written by a prof at the school... That's why it was chosen.

If everyone has to take those courses then it is even more likely that a better (but harder) book will not be chosen. At my math department most of the "regular" courses used the same book assigned by some committee or some group prefessors (probably full and maybe associate professors).

Mathwonk could you tell us how books get chosen for the upper division courses at your school.

Now, whether a professor at the school wrote a book and the subject has very little to do with it if the professor teaching the class has enough authority. I am taking a Riemannian Geometry course right now (and took the first part of it last quarter). One of the professors at our school has a Riemannian Geometry book, and the professor for our class did not choose that book even though he has before, because he did not want to take the approach taken in that book. Instead he choose a different book for us to reference that had the approach that he wanted to take.

I have also had a professor who was teaching an honors class and did not get to pick a book he liked for the course. The reason was that he was a lecturer (not even an assistant professor, not that that would have helped). Instead he got forced into using the book that the previous class (taught by an associate professor).

As Matt Grime has said before when a class is offered by several professors in the same term more likely than not, all the classes will use the same book, which has to be chosen by the department in some way. So in those cases whether a professor is a full professor or an assistant does not matter. Maybe that is the case with you EE classes which eveyone must take.

 

[mathwonk]

lower division books like calculus, are chosen by a committee, and a commitment is even made to use it for so many years. I am currently teaching from and complaining about a book, the nth iterate of thomas, by others including hass and maybe finney, that is just terrible. Excelent books are available but considered too hard for todays students, who are often deficient in algebra trig and geometry, plus all forms of formal reasoning.

Upper level books, meaning 4th year, grad level, math major books, or grad degree, even linear algebra and proof theory books, are usually chosen by the professor, who is allowed to choose his/her own books.

I have used my own notes at times, providing them free to the students, as I do some of them to the entire world on my website. Other professors choose to use their own books, but these in my opinion are among the very best books available, both pedagogically and mathematically.

In lower level courses we have been in the position of choosing books by our own faculty, which in my view were not the best books available mathematically on the subject of calculus. But these books are among the very best available for the average audience now taking calculus and were written by our professors with that fact in mind.

These professors do profit from these sales, and deserve to do so. We are free to drop these books at any time, and recently did so in favor of the thomas hass finney book, which unfortunately is greatly inferior to the book by our own former professors.

In graduate level courses the books available are mostly excellent, written by profesionals for people wishing to become professionals. Still they are often too hard for students to read, and hence a new generation of easier books even at the graduate level has become common, e.g. dummit and foote in grad algebra. this is a good book but not an excellent book.

the book by lang used to be standard for grad algebra and that by hungerford was considered second tier. now lang is considered much too hard, the book by hungerford is even considered hard, and that of dummit foote is the default choice many places.

you notice there is a steady tendency downwards, even at the grad level. so this year i found myself criticizing the DF book that I had chosen for the grad algebra course, at the request of some of the students who said they liked it.

At the grad level, for a person like myelf who has a phD but is not a specialist in algebra, to write an algebra book, is considered odd. Even in algebraic geometry which is my speciality, we prefer to sue books not just by algebraic geometers, but by world famous figures at or near the fields medal status, such as those by Mumford, Hartshorne, Shafarevich,...My notes in most cases consist of the result of reading and teachiong from books by better authors and filling in gaps which I or my students have found troubling, or adding material or expanding where it seems helpful. Some books, even by top authors have errors which it is fun to find and correct.

So my notes contain as much help as I am able to give, and may be easier to read than standard books, but the danger for the student in choosing a book by someone not of top stature is that the insight only a master can give is lost. An author cannot give what he does not have, and only the best see deepest.

since my own research is in riemann surfaces and their jacobians and moduli, theta divisors and their singularities, and torelli theorems, it is only in these areas that i feel qualified to comment knowledgeably. and yet ironically, it was only recently that i learned to appreciate the work of my friend George Kempf on the topic of riemann singularities theorems, done over 30 years ago!

indeed some of my writings on the topic must have puzzled some people, for their naivete, these past three decades. on the other hand i have been part of some research in areas of this question where kempfs ideas did not apply, so there is a good side to trying your best, even in ignorance. I.e. it is possible for someone more knowledgeable to write a more complete book, and yet for someone else less so to do some new research in that very subject. i.e. knowing and doing are different, so there is hope for all of us.

 

[WolfOfTheSteps]

Oh I see, you are trying to hold onto the idea that it is not the quality of the students that motivated the choice. your idea is tht th students are wonderful, but the bad book is forced on them by a politically powerful prof wanting to make money from it.

A lot of the students are lazy... But the average math SAT at my university as a whole is above 700, and probably near 800 in the engineering department, so they aren't stupid either.

You seemed to accuse me of being in remedial classes because I couldn't make it into better classes. I was just defending myself, since this is obviously not true since, (1) the worst book I've used was a graduate text, and (2) all engineers above freshman level take similar classes.

I'm just making the point that the worst texts I've used have been texts written by profs at my university. (With the exception of math... I minor in math, and the math department is better. I 'm taking an upperlevel undergraduate course on nonlinear differential equations with a text written by a prof that is excellent.) I'm not really making an accusation, just stating the facts. And I don't think anyone is using a prof's book because of political bullying... I think things just work out that way.

 

[mathwonk]

perhaps someone outside math would be willing to rcommend a good book if you share the topic you are interested in.

and you seem to have equated "less than outstanding" with "stupid" or "remedial". I can assure you even many students with over 700 on SAT's do not do well using the most outstanding books available from profesionals, especially now that those very SAT's have been downgraded to raise the level of today's students.

Of course I am only one eprson but I myself had well over 700, under the old scale, and I had great difficulty reading Courant in my freshman year. Of the 135 other students, all presumably as well prepared as I or better, only half survived into the second semester.

My problem was not that I was unusually stupid, but that I was unused to reading difficult books, and unused to hard work in general at the level expected in honors courses in college in the 1960's.

there is a huge difference between being stupid and being treated with kid gloves, so that not too many will fail, and have to learn a new level of work ethic.

Again, I have said I make no claim at all about non math courses, only a conjecture. I merely challenged you to actually ask your professors how they chose the books you object to, and which ones they think are best.

I do not need to best you in an argument, I would like to help you find some answers. you are not going to find them shouting into the air here anonymously.

 

[WolfOfTheSteps]

Mathwonk,

Fair enough.

I actually spent a good bit of time reading Courant/John's Intro to Calculus and Analysis when I was taking calculus (the class text was Hughes-Hallet, which I actually thought was pretty good... just not very rigorous). While I remember spending days on a single page of Courant, I enjoyed it more than any science/math book I've ever encountered.

I don't mean to whine. I guess I'm somewhat frustrated that I'm studying EE when I prefer math. In a math course I'd go and happily buy books, with almost no regard for price. But in EE it's harder to motivate myself, and it's also harder to fork over the money, so I get really annoyed when the profs assign bad books. I was just venting my frustration. :)