151–160 of 160 posts
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Thanks for pointing to Gelfand. I'd never heard of him. Intriguing that University of Chicago assigns these texts. (Heads up— there's no contact info in your profile).
Really? I see an email address. Odd.
I don't think that there is a need for the liberal use of swearing in a mathematics book ("shit" appears 5 times in your sample PDF alone, two of which are in the title). In my opinion, it makes it sound very amateur and unprofessional. > "Check this shit out:" Could be "Consider this example:" > Now get ready for some crazy shit. Using your... Now for something even more interesting. Using your...
> that there is a need for the liberal use of swearing in a mathematics book You are right that there is no //need//, but I find that a little swearing goes a long way to make the student who is scared of the subject feel more comfortable. "This is not a math book", they will think -- this is informal narrative like a blog post. A cleaned up version is in the works. ETA March because I have to finish Linear Algebra a…
I read the first 10 pages of the pdf. I'm not sure who you think your target audience is, but this book doesn't seem to serve any of them. You gloss over huge sections of algebra, and in doing so, ignore incredibly common mistakes that students make. Take a look at the top of page 9, 6 \sqrt{x} - 7 = [...]. You solve that out, but give no reason as to why you got rid of the 7 first, the 6 second, and the radical thir…
The Bible, for example, uses fractions. In Lev. 5:16 - "He must make restitution for what he has failed to do in regard to the holy things, add a fifth of the value to that and give it all to the priest, who will make atonement for him with the ram as a guilt offering, and he will be forgiven." But I'm with pflats' judgement. I see text like "Indeed, on computers systems which don’t have a hardware multiplication cir…
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The Bible, for example, uses fractions. In Lev. 5:16 - "He must make restitution for what he has failed to do in regard to the holy things, add a fifth of the value to that and give it all to the priest, who will make atonement for him with the ram as a guilt offering, and he will be forgiven." But I'm with pflats' judgement. I see text like "Indeed, on computers systems which don’t have a hardware multiplication cir…
Traditional Jewish sources would translate that as 25% . It does say one-fifth, but it's a fifth in the sense that you pay 125%, and 25% is one fifth of what you pay. There have been shifts in a lot of mathematical concepts over time and that's just one example. For instance, at some points in history people did use fractions, but favored using one in the numerator - 3/5 would have been expressed as 1/2 plus 1/10.
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Traditional Jewish sources would translate that as 25% . It does say one-fifth, but it's a fifth in the sense that you pay 125%, and 25% is one fifth of what you pay. There have been shifts in a lot of mathematical concepts over time and that's just one example. For instance, at some points in history people did use fractions, but favored using one in the numerator - 3/5 would have been expressed as 1/2 plus 1/10.
My goal was to find counter-examples to the phrase "The notion of 2.5 goats didn’t make any sense to the people of those days. They would have been totally confused by the menu at Rotisserie Romados which offers 1/4 of a chicken."
How about half a baby? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Solomon
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My goal was to find counter-examples to the phrase "The notion of 2.5 goats didn’t make any sense to the people of those days. They would have been totally confused by the menu at Rotisserie Romados which offers 1/4 of a chicken."
Sure, just nitpicking. How about half a baby? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Solomon
Ivan, could you share a little about your toolchain writing this book? There's been a lot of traffic on HN around self publishing and I think it would be of interest. P.S. I'll buy it in ebook form!
dokuwiki | dokutexit | sed (cleanup) | pdflatex
The latex document class is extbook -- the regular book class does not have the 9pt option.
@READERS Sorry for inflicting upon you the 9pt font. I know it is tiny, but look at how small and portable the book is now ;)
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I am still researching how to generate .epub and .mobi form latex files. If anyone has pointers to articles which discuss this, I would be very interested to hear. PM me, or post them here so that everyone can learn. (plasTeX? MathJax? MathML?)
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Thanks for pointing to Gelfand. I'd never heard of him. Intriguing that University of Chicago assigns these texts. (Heads up— there's no contact info in your profile).
Really? I see an email address. Odd.
Anyone want to suggest some?
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I , too, would love a list of 'casualized' textbooks. I was interested in the premise of this, but the flaws i've caught thus far (the newton/natural number thing got me too) have made me lose confidence in the rest of the book.
"The Idiot's Guide to [Math Subject]" have all been really useful to me for my college courses. Well-written, detailed, and understanding of common mistakes, I would highly recommend them.