Book Description

This book explains difficult math concepts in an easy to understand and entertaining format using cartoons and drawings. Children love the real world connections between math and science and will be challenged by over 1000 problems in areas such as algebra, astronomy, trigonometry, probability, and more. Answers are included in the back of the book. A great resource for those of any age who love math. Challenge Math is designed for children in grades 4-8 with higher math abilitiy and interest but could be used by older students and adults as well. Contains 20 chapters with instruction and problems at three levels of difficulty. Challenge Math can be used by children independently or in a classroom setting. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Look elsewhere
Each chapter of this book clearly and simply introduces one aspect of middle school mathematics. Following each introduction are a set of problems aimed at three progressively difficult skill levels. There is an answer sheet at the back of the book.

Unfortunately, what's missing from this book is the essence of any math course: showing your work. Consequently, you will find no guidance or strategy(ies) for solving the problems. Moreover, if you have the wherewithall to solve the more difficult problems, you probably aren't going to find very useful the abecedarian introductions the author provides.

These points, taken in conjuction with the amateurish, mouse-drawn computer graphics, make this one disappointing book.

Just what I was looking for...
This book really saved me! In my first year of teaching a 5th grade class of gifted/high achieving math students I struggled to find the right resource to adequately challenge the students. I particularly liked this book because each unit (chapter) is all-inclusive. There is a great lesson at the beginning followed by practice and then three levels of questions. The only supplement I needed to create was a method of assessing my students. I highly recommend this book to any parent or teacher looking for a math challenge for students. ... Read more

Book Description

The issue of how to provide equitable schooling for ethnic and linguistic minorities has come to the forefront of education. This volume brings together top researchers to examine equity from the standpoint of mathematics education--an excellent forum for the topic, since the results are quantifiable. The first essays address broad cultural issues, such as how social class and our notion of merit enter into education. The second section of the book analyzes gender issues in math learning, and the final section examines language and mathematics.A number of themes cut across these three groupings.For example, a critique of the reform movement surfaces in several chapters; many of the chapters look closely at teachers and the dynamics of the classroom, and chapters in different sections address issues of teacher empowerment and skill upgrading. Researchers, students, and policy makers in education, psychology, and cognitive science will want to read these provocative contributions. ... Read more

Book Description

Every year thousands of new mathematics instructors and teaching assistants begin their teaching careers, and , scores of experienced faculty seek ways to explore the new teaching possibilities offered by technological and pedagogical innovations. There is a great need for tools to train college mathematics instructors in both basic teaching skills and innovative methodologies.

Learning to Teach and Teaching to Learn is a self-contained and extensive resource that addresses this need. It describes training and mentoring activities that have been successfully used in a variety of settings. with a wide range of new instructors, including graduate student teaching assistants, undergraduate tutors, graders and lab assistants, as well as postdoctoral, adjunct, part-time and new regular-rank faculty. It addresses a variety of teaching issues including cooperative learning, technology and assessment.

The book provides a broad range of material including:

• the structure and operation of an integrated professional development program.
• a complete description of a pre-semester orientation session for instructors who are either new to teaching or new to a department.
• a guide to visiting and observing classrooms, including samples observations made and the feedback given.
• descriptions of procedures for customizing and developing new training materials.
• an extensive list of references and suggested readings.

This material will be of interest to faculty and instructional staff responsible for training and mentoring adjuncts, new faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate assistants and to those interested in an integrated approach to improving and expanding their teaching skills. Although specifically written as training materials,, each chapter includes an introduction, goals, activities, and an annotated list of suggested readings. ... Read more

Book Description

Targeted Review
Kaplan's SAT Math Workbook: Fifth Edition focuses your preparation on exactly the key concepts you need to know. This targeted review helps you maximize your study time and build the skills you need to score higher.

Realistic Practice
Each chapter in this book comes with in-depth practice sets with complete explanations for every answer. In addition, you can test your skills on 2 practice math exams. Question after question, practice set after practice set, you will build the skills and confidence you need.

Tips & Tools
In SAT Math Workbook: Fifth Edition you receive helpful techniques and strategies for conquering the toughest math questions on the SAT. In addition, you can get a bird's eye view of the test with Kaplan's Exclusive Top 100 SAT Math Concepts.

Visit kaptest.com
Kaptest.com is your one-stop resource for getting into college. Get the latest information on the college admissions process, study aids, and much more. Sign up for the College Edge, our free newsletter. Visit kaptest.com today and get a head start on the rest of your life. ... Read more

Book Description

The book is an alphabetical dictionary and handbook that gives parents of elementary, middle school, and high school students what they need to know to help their children understand the math they're learning. The book can also be used by students themselves and is suitable for anybody who is reviewing math to take standardized tests or other exams. Foreign students, whose English-language mathematics vocabulary needs to be strengthened, will also benefit from this book. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Invaluable Resource for Parents
If you're like most parents in their late thirties and forties and its been more than 20 years since you've done any math, this book is an invaluable resource when you child asks you for help with his or her homework.For example, do you remember how to solve a problem with negative exponents?If not, get out the book and look up "Exponent" under "E," and there will be a simple explanation.Thank you Brita Immergut!!!

"Math's Martha Stewart (only fun!)"
Brita Immergut makes math fun! And accessible. There's not much more to say. Except that her publicist should be out trying to book her on every day time talk show in America. She's turned something difficult into something that seamlessly draws kids and parents closer together, and make them smarter in the process. The author deserves a platform and, even more, the huge audience of families who want to learn together. Buy this if you don't just want to work with your kids on math but want quality time together. ... Read more

Book Description

Series: MAA Notes

This book, a collection of assessment practices that have been tried by more than 100 contributors in mathematics at a wide variety of schools, attempts to offer the mathematics teacher suggestions from an insider’s perspective. The book is not formulaic: no author claims to have "the answer," and many of the projects reported on are still in progress. On the other hand, the articles provide a wealth of suggestions from creative, energetic, and concerned individuals who have had the courage to experiment and to critique their own efforts. Without doubt, the reader will find in these pages encouragement to experiment on his or her own, to find assessment methods that are personally meaningful. ... Read more

Book Description

Rotman, Joseph, Journey into Mathematics: The Worldof Proof Prompting readers to do mathematics, not merely readabout it, this proactive book has users reading and writing proofs at theoutset. Complete proofs are given from the start, and coverage begins withelementary mathematics to allow focus on the writing and reading of proofswithout the distraction of absorbing new ideas simultaneously.KEYTOPICS:Contains material that is familiar to calculus readers (i.e.,induction, binomial theorem, polygonal, using the Diophantine parametrizationof the circle by rational functions to solve trigonometric identities, etc.),and engages readers throughout with interesting expositions using history,etymology, and humorous asides. Material is presented as a 'single story' toaid in the subjects progressive growth and development.Formathematicians. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A very entertaining read
The book has a very interesting approach to a wide range of topics in maths. Uses lots of anecdotes and historical facts to motivate the reader. I haven't really sat down to the exercises, but I love the stories and pointers.. sure shall get at the sources mentioned, sometime. ... Read more

Book Description

Most philosophers of mathematics treat it as isolated, timeless, ahistorical, inhuman. Reuben Hersh argues the contrary, that mathematics must be understood as a human activity, a social phenomenon, part of human culture, historically evolved, and intelligible only in a social context. Hersh pulls the screen back to reveal mathematics as seen by professionals, debunking many mathematical myths, and demonstrating how the "humanist" idea of the nature of mathematics more closely resembles how mathematicians actually work. At the heart of his book is a fascinating historical account of the mainstream of philosophy--ranging from Pythagoras, Descartes, and Spinoza, to Bertrand Russell, David Hilbert, and Rudolph Carnap--followed by the mavericks who saw mathematics as a human artifact, including Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Mill, and Lakatos. What is Mathematics, Really? reflects an insider's view of mathematical life, and will be hotly debated by anyone with an interest in mathematics or the philosophy of science. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

At times full of empty rhetoric
This book is interesting, and has made me think hard about my own views. Mostly that is because I disagree with a lot of the beliefs touted by Hersh.

Hersh starts out with an approach to the hypercube, always a fascinating topic for me. Pages later he is trying, very unsuccessfully though he doesn't realize, to decimate the "old fashioned" views about numbers, physical objects, social conventions, and basically everything Intelligible. His arguments are so terrible they basically ruin the book. He uses every form of slimy rhetoric to be convincing. Read these pages with an open eye and you'll see how often he plays on the reader's biases and preconceptions to make his point seem clear.

For the rest, the book is quite inclusive. A lot of this is interesting. But all of these ideas have existed without the help of Hersh, who would seem to have problem accepting this fact unless we reduced the timespan of their existence to include Hersh's closest biological relatives, the rest of us humans.

A choppy rough draft in philosophy of mathematics
This book comes across as some kind of extended constructivist/pragmatist complaint. Disjointed in its execution, it gives the appearance of a bunch of lectures too-quickly thrown together. Some weak arguments appear here and there, a few even coming across as downright silly. Perhaps its because Hersh has a simplistic, even at times sophomoric understanding of philosophy. He also has the lazy-man's habit of quoting huge tracts of other peoples writings without giving any sort of application or interpretation. On the up side, the book does have an encyclopedic breadth, so it's not a complete waste of time, even given its weaknesses. I took down several references. Did I like the book? Yes. Hersh should have retained an editor, or perhaps spent another year tidying it up. One more thing: Hersh is very anti-theistic. He downgrades Platonism on the basis that nobody believes in God anymore. He really should get out more, or at least read some sociology. The vast majority of the human race and even westerners believe in God. Hence, maybe Platonism in mathematics isn't so crazy after all.

Really philosophy of mathematics
The book offers the best kind of live, seriously thought out, philosophy of mathematics--in real contact with mathematical practice and teaching. Hersh writes from a deep love of mathematics and a deep concern to make it accessible to others, and for him both of those motivate philosophic reflection on the nature of mathematics.

Hersh notes that mathematics is a social enterprise. People may pursue it alone in their rooms, and even do the greatest thinking that way (as Andrew Wiles did some great thinking in near secrecy on the way to proving the Fermat theorem). But what they think about is not their sole creation (witness the many enthusiastic citations Wiles gives to what he owes others). What we call "proofs" in actual practice are not complete deductions in formal logic, nor simply "whatever persuades you". They are reasonings that live up to a socially recognized standard.

Hersh believes, and argues, that students who understand the social nature of mathematics will approach it with more interest and less fear than those who think it is inhuman perfection. Actually, I think he is wrong about that. Students today generally believe literature is a social product, but they still too often think that "getting it" is an arcane and uninteresting skill of English teachers. But Hersh's view deserves careful consideration and you can learn from him whether you agree in the end or not.

I will also say that Hersh's descriptions of earlier philosophies of mathematics are not always historically very accurate. And though he has genuine concern to give sympathetic accounts of them (before giving his own refutation) he does not always succeed. But neither are his versions notably worse than the versions in other similar books. For accurate accounts of Plato or the 20th century giants Poincare, Hilbert, Brouwer, and so on, you have just got to read the originals.

Anyone interested in philosophic thought about math, and not just solutions to one or another specific technical problem in the philosophy of math, should read this book. But don't only read this one.

Old wine in a "new" goatskin
This book is another in the "Teachers First, Technically Proficient Last" genre. Hersh has written a Political Manifesto of the radical socialistic, liberal, "modern" teacher's misconception of what it means to teach. He is more interested in "cute" partitionings of (genuinely brilliant) philosophers of mathematics and mathematicians into "right" and "left" (the word "wing" left for the reader to insert), than he is in explaining mathematics (Really). Any discussions of mathematics are so trivial that he only makes a couple of basic errors (the most gross being employment of Platonic concepts); the rest is simply an expression of his apparent resentment at things being what they are rather than what he happens to want them to be. This whole book could have been written with one sentence; Mathematics is a social enterprise,and that's not even correct. Mathematics is a human enterprise (usually best done individually). The book will NOT explain what mathematics is really or otherwise. In its alleged field it is akin to Wilson's Consilience and Shapiro's Philosophy of Mathematics and even more unevenly written.

Cutting edge philosophy for modern thinkers
If you are very smart and enjoy thinking at the leading edge, this book can help you do that even better. Hersh, a mathematician and math teacher for 30 years, takes on the hard problems of what is knowledge and where does it come from, comparing the Platonist, formalist, structuralist, and humanist views. The work parallels what Kuhn has done for the philosophy of science. In particular he does a good job of showing why Platonism -- the commonly accepted view that math (read truth) exists a-priori and we merely "discover" it -- really does not hold up. Curiously, I found this deeply liberating, as it opens up much more breathing space for original thought, highlighting the role of the mathematician (thinker) as creator, as much as discoverer. "Must" reading for anyone who considers himself or herself at or near the genius bracket. I scaled my rating back to "9" because as the book acknowledges, it is the pioneer of a new genre (philosophy of mathematics) and hence it cannot deliver (on the first try) a complete answer. But what it does deliver is an extremely useful beginning. ... Read more

Book Description

Murray offers a range of strategies that highlight the important role language plays in the learning of math. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

too easy and unrealistic
The exams in this book are too easy, unrealistic and they are very much alike. Besides, the questions don't cover a wide range of topics. A waste of time and money! ... Read more

Book Description

The Book for Math Empowerment: Rethinking the Subject of Mathematics deals with the psychology of learning math.It approaches the issue of math anxiety through an affimative process.It engages the reader by dealing with the issue of his/her belief system.The reader is encouraged to take a realistic look at false paradigms and to understand how these have encumbered him/her in the learning of mathematics.Study skills are enumerated in depth, along with case studies of students who lost their way.Additionally, the reader is given a personal look into why musicians often make better math students; how baggage can be created inadvertently by teachers in a classroom, and parents, in the home.This is a frank and honest look as to why mathematics has been given a false mystique in American culture and what can be done about it. ... Read more

Book Description

The discipline of mathematics has not been spared the sweeping critique of postmodernism. Is mathematical theory true for all time, or are mathematical constructs in fact fallible? This fascinating book examines the tensions that have arisen between modern and postmodern views of mathematics, explores alternative theories of mathematical truth, explains why the issues are important, and shows how a Christian perspective makes a difference. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

An Historic Look at Mathematics
This is a weighty volume and is not light reading; yet, it is worth forging through to see where mathematical perspective has been and where it is going in relationship to world views. Especially interesting are the essays on how the post-modern, relativistic world views mathematical truths. The collection of authors who contributed to the book is impressive, especially considering their diverse educational and theological backgrounds. ... Read more

Book Description

Over the past decade, the undergraduate abstract algebra classroom has undergone a dramatic transformation..Many faculty who were exposed to new pedagogical techniques during the calculus reform movement, wanted to experiment with those techniques in more advanced classes.A variety of software packages were written or extended for use in abstract algebra.This collection of article is the outgrowth of several gatherings of mathematicians who were interested in discussing the teaching and learning of abstract algebra.

The Editors of "Innovations in Teaching Abstract Algebra" have chosen the articles appearing in the volume in order to acquaint readers about various technological innovations, to detail methods of teaching abstract algebra that engage students, and to share more general reflections on teaching an abstract algebra course. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Required reading for those who teach it
By the very name of the subject, the teaching of abstract algebra is something that one would think could not easily be done with a computer. That is false, and there are many existence proofs of that in this book. A collection of papers by instructors who have used new and innovative techniques to teach abstract algebra, these papers should be considered mandatory reading for everyone who teaches it.
When thinking about mathematics and the computer, your first thought is usually towards the major packages such as Mathematica and Maple. However, some instructors have developed other software and many of the papers in this collection describe their experiences. The software is easy to understand and in most cases is a free download. Students who walk in the door the first day of their abstract algebra class generally have many years of computer experience behind them. Not only do they expect computers to be a part of their education, they are reaching the point where they are beginning to demand it. When quality software is readily available and an instructor does not take advantage of such a powerful learning tool, they are doing the students and their profession a disservice.
Abstract algebra is a difficult topic for most people, and anything that eases the learning curve is to be embraced. From this book, you can learn enough to place it in a big, tight bear hug.

Published in Journal of Recreational Mathematics, reprinted with permission. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Teaching First A Guide for New Mathematicians
Series: MAA Notes

An invaluable guide for new teachers.

In Teaching First, Thomas Rishel draws on his nearly forty years of teaching experience to address the nuts and bolts issues of teaching college mathematics.

The book is written for the mathematics TA or young faculty member who may be wondering just where and how to start. Rishel opens the eyes of the reader to pitfalls they may never have considered, and offers advice to balancing an obligation to the student with an obligation to mathematics. Throughout he provides answers to seemingly daunting questions shared by most new TAs, such as how to keep a classroom active and lively; how to prepare writing assignments, tests, and quizzes; how exactly to write a letter of recommendation; and how to pace, minute by minute, the "mathematical talks" one will be called upon to give.

Teaching First is Rishel’s answer to those who may suggest that good teaching is innate and cannot be taught. This he emphatically denies, and he insists that solid teaching starts with often overlooked seeming trivialities that one needs to master before exploring theories of learning. Along the way he also covers the general issues that teachers of all subjects eventually experience: fairness in grading, professionalism among students and colleagues, identifying and understanding student types, and technology in the classroom. All of the subjects in the book are considered within the context of Rishel’s experience as a mathematics teacher. All are illustrated with anecdotes and suggestions specific to the teaching of mathematics.

Teaching First is a comprehensive guide for a mathematics TA, from the first semester preparations through the unforeseen challenges of accepting a faculty position. Its aim is to prepare new TAs with clear suggestions for rapidly improving their teaching abilities. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Sound advice for new teachers of mathematics
It is very unfortunate that most teaching assistants (TA's) in mathematics are put in the classroom with little or no training. In my case, I faced my first recitation class after having only a two hour meeting with the instructor and all the TA's for the course. There is so much that is unknown and while you do learn on the job, the students often get shorted, and in this day of legal action run amok, is a potentially hazardous situation.
In this book, Rishel sets down some very sound advice for all mathematicians who are faced with teaching, from the first TA position to finding that first critical job after graduation. Simple things like preparing a resume and how to deal with difficult situations are examined. For example, suppose you know that a particular student has had a difficult time with a family illness or death and so in sympathy, you forgive a couple of points and award a higher grade. However, this act of compassion is not understood by another student who did not have such problems, has earned the same score and now demands equal treatment. What should(could) you do in such cases? Such scenarios can and do happen, so you had better be prepared to deal with them.
Other issues are topics such as the professional distance between student and teacher, which in terms of age and experience may almost be nonexistent. This is one that is very difficult and in many ways is a personal choice. Some people, both teachers and students, are more comfortable with a formal relationship and others find the formal approach uncomfortable and prefer the personal. When I was a TA, the course professor expressed displeasure with a colleague who played racquetball with another TA. In his opinion, such an action violated the principles of professional distance. Easy to dismiss, these are principles that need to be considered, evaluated and planned for.
Setting down policies and learning how to handle difficult situations is often considered to be unnecessary, but serious problems can and do occur, even to the point of violence. New TA's are often the least trained of all teachers, and I would strongly recommend that anyone just starting in that role read this book before facing a class for the first time. Mathematics majors who will be teaching in either middle or high school will also find some sound advice in course management. ... Read more

Book Description

This bilingual edition (German/English) of a talk given at the International Congress of Mathematicians, Berlin, 1998, discusses the role of mathematics within our culture.With an introduction by David Mumford and illustrations by K. H. Hofmann, the essay holds an appeal to all mathematicians, established or aspiring. This much-treasured volume is now available in a keepsake hardcover edition. ... Read more

Book Description

Primetime's innovative strategies help students become autonomous, life-long learners as they discover the significance of mathematics and science in the "real" world. ... Read more