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"Basic Algebra" means "material typically covered in late middle or early high school".
Book titles like these are just more evidence that some mathematicians don't understand (or willfully misconstrue) the meaning of words like "basic" or "introduction". "Basic Algebra" means "material typically covered in late middle or early high school".
I'm by no means a typography nerd, but the font used in both PDFs is really bad. Not only is it visually unpleasant; most importantly, it is genuinely hard to read.
Book titles like these are just more evidence that some mathematicians don't understand (or willfully misconstrue) the meaning of words like "basic" or "introduction". "Basic Algebra" means "material typically covered in late middle or early high school".
Book titles like these are just more evidence that some mathematicians don't understand (or willfully misconstrue) the meaning of words like "basic" or "introduction". "Basic Algebra" means "material typically covered in late middle or early high school".
I disagree. The word "introduction" immediately introduces ambiguity: Introduction to whom? An introduction to the aspiring physicist will certainly look drastically different from one to a high school student or an undergraduate mathematics student, but they all have reasonable need of an introduction to abstract algebra.
Then the word "abstract" should appear in the title.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. The word "introduction" immediately introduces ambiguity: Introduction to whom? An introduction to the aspiring physicist will certainly look drastically different from one to a high school student or an undergraduate mathematics student, but they all have reasonable need of an introduction to abstract algebra.
> they all have reasonable need of an introduction to abstract algebra. Then the word "abstract" should appear in the title.
The best undergrad algebra textbook I've studied is Algebra by Mac Lane and Birkhoff (3rd edition! the previous editions aren't quite as good and substantially different; i haven't seen the 4th edition and it is out of print so /shrug). I've used multiple books both in self-study and class and this book is, to me, in a league of its own. Not only does Algebra teach modern algebra, it teaches one to think like a moder…
I don't like the typical definition-theorem-proof approach of most textbook in mathematics, including these. It's great for a classroom, no good for self-study. As an alternative, I highly recommend A Book of Abstract Algebra by Pinter. If you work through that first, you may actually enjoy these two later.
You can say that again. The other day I was looking at proving the Pythagorean theorem in R_n. Merely starting the problem formally is non-trivial. :-(
I'm by no means a typography nerd, but the font used in both PDFs is really bad. Not only is it visually unpleasant; most importantly, it is genuinely hard to read.
Looks like Times to me. It's a standard mathematical font, and anyway is more pleasant and easier to read than the abominable Computer Modern fonts.