Book Description

This book is designed for courses in mathematics for instructors who choose to focus on and/or take an activities approach. This book provides inductive activities for prospective elementary school teachers and incorporates the use of physical models, manipulatives, and visual images to develop concepts and encourage higher level thinking. (This text contains activity sets, one corresponding to each section of the companion text, Mathematics for Elementary Teachers: A Conceptual Approach (also by Bennett/Nelson). The Activities Approach text can be used independently or along with its companion volume.) ... Read more

Reviews (5)

It's a Textbook
Anyone who wants to save money can get the 5th edition for a fraction of the cost.The main difference is that sections 7.1 and 7.2 are reversed.

I have taught many times from this book and since I didn't choose the text I have no way to compare it to the alternatives.

My students find the book confusing, in part, because the book attempts to cover everything an instructor might want to teach from it.Any text covering this material would have the same characteristic.It is critical to guide students as to what is important and what is not.One cannot simply teach this textbook as is.

Much of the material covered in the text is middle school level and not part of the K-5 curriculum.That's fine as long as the instructor realizes that students aspiring to teach Kindergarten will find middle school material difficult, confusing and irrelevant to their goals.

There is not enough practice in this book to build any skill in which the student is deficient or to cover any gaps in the student's preparation.It is simply not possible to do this in a math for elementary teachers course.Students must rely on tutors for this kind of help.The textbook, then, does not proceed sequentially - like an algebra textbook would - to build skills in a systematic way but rather topically.The book veers from the very abstract to the very concrete and students have trouble with this also.

Most students who will use this book have a good grasp of place-value, operations with fractions and decimals, factoring and simple algegra.This material is covered in Chapters 1, 3-6.3.This is not the case for sets, functions, logic, all topics in geometry, and simple probability and statistics.These topics may be in the official high school curriculum but are rarely taught to mastery to the typical student who decides to become an elementary teacher.Furthermore, these topics are ignored in college math placement tests and in remedial math courses.Those responsible for designing a course that might use this book must take this reality into account.

Another challenge for students is to approach mathematics concepts in which they have a sound working knowledge from multiple learning styles.This is difficult even for those who are well prepared.The book is good resource for this.

Horrible book!
Very complicated book. Bad examples and format. AN FYI for college students trying to save money, the older edition is the SAME as the newest one. What a rip off.

This book made me want to drop out of grad school!
Maybe it's the teacher, perhaps it's the book. But this is one of the most difficult classes I've had in my life. All I feel like doing is pulling out my hair. This book is so unclear. If you're trying to learn math, this isn't the book for you. If you want to be confused, I highly recommend it.

Unclear
This book is not clearly written.Many terms are used incorrectly or in a very questionable manner.The answers in the back of the book for all odd-numbered "homework" problems and all test questions is very helpful and convenient.If I were chosing a textbook, it would not be this.

A good resource for the non-math minded
I had Bennett as an instructor and used this book throughout the course sequence. I found it to be a helpful resource for teachers who were unfamiliar or "rusty" with mathematics.However, if you are amath-minded person looking for more ideas, this book will not help youdevelop your potential. It is a good place to start thinking about ways toteach and learn mathematics, but not a great collection of information onthe whole. ... Read more

Book Description

Teachers often want to learn new ideas and approaches to improve their teaching, but their efforts are often blocked by structural constraints in their districts and schools. How can schools overcome these barriers to provide more supportive environments for change? The authors answer this question through the study of six cases of schools and districts where teachers and researchers collaborated to develop teaching for understanding in math and science. This new book features: * A new conceptual model of how school resources relate to teaching and learning, focusing not only on material resources such as time and money but also on human and social resources * Methods that administrators can use to support teachers who want to improve their teaching of math and science * Elements that professional developers should look for in a school environment when they are considering working with staff on teaching improvements * Answers to important questions, including how schools operate as organizations, how they control work, how they respond to changes in their environment, and how they improve classroom teaching and learning ... Read more

Book Description

This is a mathematical text suitable for students of engineering and science who are at the third year undergraduate level or beyond. It is a book of applicable mathematics. It avoids the approach of listing only the techniques, followed by a few examples, without explaining why the techniques work. Thus, it provides not only the know-how but also the know-why. Equally, the text has not been written as a book of pure mathematics with a list of theorems followed by their proofs. The authors' aim is to help students develop an understanding of mathematics and its applications. They have refrained from using clichés like "it is obvious" and "it can be shown", which may be true only to a mature mathematician. On the whole, the authors have been generous in writing down all the steps in solving the example problems.

The book comprises ten chapters. Each chapter contains several solved problems clarifying the introduced concepts. Some of the examples are taken from the recent literature and serve to illustrate the applications in various fields of engineering and science. At the end of each chapter, there are assignment problems with two levels of difficulty. A list of references is provided at the end of the book.

This book is the product of a close collaboration between two mathematicians and an engineer. The engineer has been helpful in pinpointing the problems which engineering students encounter in books written by mathematicians. ... Read more

Book Description

The new edition of Let's Review Math A and Barron's Regents Exams and Answers, Math A are combined in a two-book package.Purchase of this two-book Power Pack represents a retail savings of $2.95 as compared to the price of books purchased separately.

This major revision prepares students to succeed on the New York State Math A Regents Exam as it is now given. The book places increased emphasis on use of the graphing calculator, and in line with New York State Regents core curriculum, it shows how given problems can be solved in several different ways. The author also includes new Regents question types dealing, for instance, with motion problems and mathematical systems defined by tables. The totally rewritten chapter on problem-solving offers students a core set of strategies that apply to curriculum-related exercises. In addition to subject review, practice questions and exercises, the book also presents some complete recent Math A Regents exams with answers. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Great Review For The Regents
Great practice for the Regents. ... Read more

Book Description

Aimed at native Spanish speakers and recent immigrants to the United States, this book helps the reader to acquire practical, essential math skills by reading crucial directions in their native Spanish. With both an English and Spanish introduction and annotated Table of Contents, this edition ensures clarity and ease of use to make learning practical math quick and painless. ... Read more

Book Description

"Metric geometry" is an approach to geometry based on the notionof length on a topological space. This approach experienced avery fast development in the last few decades and penetratedinto many other mathematical disciplines, such as group theory,dynamical systems, and partial differential equations.

The objective of this graduate textbook is twofold: to give adetailed exposition of basic notions and techniques used in thetheory of length spaces, and, more generally, to offer anelementary introduction into a broad variety of geometricaltopics related to the notion of distance, including Riemannianand Carnot-Caratheodory metrics, the hyperbolic plane,distance-volume inequalities, asymptotic geometry (large scale,coarse), Gromov hyperbolic spaces, convergence of metric spaces,and Alexandrov spaces (non-positively and non-negatively curvedspaces). The authors tend to work with "easy-to-touch"mathematical objects using "easy-to-visualize" methods.

The authors set a challenging goal of making the core parts ofthe book accessible to first-year graduate students. Most newconcepts and methods are introduced and illustrated usingsimplest cases and avoiding technicalities. The book containsmany exercises, which form a vital part of exposition. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Interesting, but a bit uneven
The authors present a self-contained treatment of the geometry of length spaces. They begin with the definition of length spaces, and by the final chapter cover almost all of the material in the well known survey paper by Burago, Gromov, and Perel'man. Overall, the book provides an interesting and and accessible introduction to an important class of spaces (length spaces arise as limits of sequences of Riemannian manifolds). I found it exceedingly interesting that one can build analogues of most of the concepts from Riemannian geometry using only the intrinsic metric. There is great emphasis on exposition in this book; Burago makes great effort to motivate definitions and provide interesting examples. The reader is cautioned, however, that numerous typographic errors are to be found (some in fundamental definitions).

My only complaint is the uneveness of the treatment. The authors spend two chapters developing some of the basic tools of Riemannian geometry in the setting of surfaces in R^3. It seems unlikely to me that a reader who is interested in length spaces would not already have at least passing aquaintence with Riemannian geometry. This, however, is a minor point, and I can recommend the book very highly. ... Read more

Book Description

Part of the Get Wise! series, Get Wise! Mastering Math Word Problems helps readers age 13 to 16 improve their math skills, specifically covering math word problems. Led by the hip, clever, wisecracking Chi, Word Problems discusses ways to ‘translate’ word problems so they are easy to understand (and to solve) and offers entertaining drills, fun activities, and games to help readers apply their skills. ... Read more

Book Description

Environmental Mathematics seeks to marry the most pressing challenge of our time with the most powerful technology of our time - mathematics. This book does this at an elementary level and demonstrates a wide variety of significant environmental applications that can be explored without resorting to calculus. Environmental Mathematics in the Classroom includes several chapters accessible enough to be a text in a general education course, or to enrich an elementary algebra course. Ground-level ozone, pollution and water use, preservation of whales, mathematical economics, the movement of clouds over a mountain range, at least one population model and a smorgasbord of 'newspaper mathematics' can be studied at this level and would form a stimulating course. It would prepare future teachers not only to learn basic mathematics, but to understand how they can integrate it into other topics that will intrigue students. ... Read more