What I'm Doing
Aug. 1st, 2010 01:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pasitheaIt's late at night so naturally I'm on amazon raging at the quality of children's geometry books.
There's really nothing that can quite ruin an evening like reading a book that SHOULD be teaching kids the beauty and wonder of math and instead find that you're rueing the state of the publishing industry.
For what it's worth: Kyoodoz Geometry Solutions COULD have been a fantastic book. It would be nice if it actually had proofs and took the time to explain the formulae but if you were a child just looking for a book to cram formulae into your head or you wanted geometry for practical situations and didn't care much about the proofs (and indeed, that was my purpose for checking it out from the library) it COULD be fantastic.
I say could because it appears to have had no editing what so ever save for basic spell checking. So instead of being a great book that could help a child move along in math, it's just annoying. There's a key of terms at the start but the font choice is appalling and the difference between a line segment and a line of infinite length is approximately 1/100th of a point. (Point being the printing point in this case, though it may as well be 1/100th the width of a point if you get my point.) I about went blind trying to see it.
Similarly, terms are used that were never introduced and are never _ever_ explains. WHO CARES what 'O' stands for in geometry? I'm sure it's not important!
And, as if to make it worse, the book also has a 'comic'. You remember those kind of not funny comics you'd find in school texts with weak puns and things like that? It's those. It really has nothing to do with what you're studying and in fact, I'd argue that the puns only confuse the terms, making the book worse for a student. But what I really take issue with is the poor flow of the comics. Word bubbles in the upper left responding to word bubbles in the lower right. It doesn't follow a logical flow for any language that I can think of.
So... All in all... If you're just looking for a book to refresh on a couple of formulae and there's scant little on the library shelf, it's great. If you were actually someone not familiar with math and thinking this would help you in school, you'd probably just end up hating math more. Very sad. :(
In other news:
The jig we built for the saw is working well. We used it for a bit today and I am happy to report I still have all my digits.
After a lot of debate, we've finally started work on the stairs. The bottom 4 are out and new ones are cut to go in. Demolition is going quite nicely and the build also looks like it will be smooth sailing. The main slowdown is hauling off the dirt and broken concrete. We literally have no place to put it. There's no room for a dumpster or even a good pile (unless we obliterate our vegetable garden) The neighbor up the hill wanted concrete fill and dirt but that means that we're putting all the concrete in one bucket and all the dirt in another, then hauling those all the way up the hill and dumping them there. Mind you, it's good exercise but it really slows our progress. I wish there were enough space to just really gut out the old stairs and put in the new because the actual work is pretty easy compared with the hauling.
There's really nothing that can quite ruin an evening like reading a book that SHOULD be teaching kids the beauty and wonder of math and instead find that you're rueing the state of the publishing industry.
For what it's worth: Kyoodoz Geometry Solutions COULD have been a fantastic book. It would be nice if it actually had proofs and took the time to explain the formulae but if you were a child just looking for a book to cram formulae into your head or you wanted geometry for practical situations and didn't care much about the proofs (and indeed, that was my purpose for checking it out from the library) it COULD be fantastic.
I say could because it appears to have had no editing what so ever save for basic spell checking. So instead of being a great book that could help a child move along in math, it's just annoying. There's a key of terms at the start but the font choice is appalling and the difference between a line segment and a line of infinite length is approximately 1/100th of a point. (Point being the printing point in this case, though it may as well be 1/100th the width of a point if you get my point.) I about went blind trying to see it.
Similarly, terms are used that were never introduced and are never _ever_ explains. WHO CARES what 'O' stands for in geometry? I'm sure it's not important!
And, as if to make it worse, the book also has a 'comic'. You remember those kind of not funny comics you'd find in school texts with weak puns and things like that? It's those. It really has nothing to do with what you're studying and in fact, I'd argue that the puns only confuse the terms, making the book worse for a student. But what I really take issue with is the poor flow of the comics. Word bubbles in the upper left responding to word bubbles in the lower right. It doesn't follow a logical flow for any language that I can think of.
So... All in all... If you're just looking for a book to refresh on a couple of formulae and there's scant little on the library shelf, it's great. If you were actually someone not familiar with math and thinking this would help you in school, you'd probably just end up hating math more. Very sad. :(
In other news:
The jig we built for the saw is working well. We used it for a bit today and I am happy to report I still have all my digits.
After a lot of debate, we've finally started work on the stairs. The bottom 4 are out and new ones are cut to go in. Demolition is going quite nicely and the build also looks like it will be smooth sailing. The main slowdown is hauling off the dirt and broken concrete. We literally have no place to put it. There's no room for a dumpster or even a good pile (unless we obliterate our vegetable garden) The neighbor up the hill wanted concrete fill and dirt but that means that we're putting all the concrete in one bucket and all the dirt in another, then hauling those all the way up the hill and dumping them there. Mind you, it's good exercise but it really slows our progress. I wish there were enough space to just really gut out the old stairs and put in the new because the actual work is pretty easy compared with the hauling.
