{"id":990,"date":"2017-01-23T00:55:02","date_gmt":"2017-01-23T05:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/?p=990"},"modified":"2020-11-20T08:14:46","modified_gmt":"2020-11-20T13:14:46","slug":"improving-the-math-chapter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/improving-the-math-chapter\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving the math chapter"},"content":{"rendered":"

The goal for the NO BULLSHIT guide to MATH & PHYSICS<\/a> was to make a concise textbook that teaches university-level calculus and mechanics in a nice “combined package.” The math fundamentals chapter grew out of the need to introduce the prerequisite material that many students often lack. I didn’t want to be like “y’all should remember this math from high school,” because if you don’t remember the material such comments would not be very helpful. A review<\/em> of high school math would be more helpful.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Over time, I kept adding and improving the introductory math material in Chapter 1 until it reached the point that it’s a pretty solid little intro to high school math. I was very proud of the fast paced flow of explanations which manages to cover a lot of material (70% of high school math topics) in less than one hundred pages. Many readers also praised this chapter, saying how useful they found it as a review<\/em> of high school math topics.<\/p>\n

Recently I’ve been hearing from several readers who say the intro chapter sucks, and the book sucks, and by extension I suck. If it was one or two reviewers I could have dismissed this feedback, but now I realize there is a clear and consistent message in the readers’ feedback: Chapter 1 sucks as a first contact with math<\/strong>. My effort to “cover” all the high school topics in a fast-paced narrative like in the free mechanics<\/a> and linear algebra<\/a> tutorials is probably the worst thing to do for absolute beginners. I can totally understand why a reader who is not familiar at all with sets, algebra, and functions will have a rough time in the opening pages of the book. In the words of a reader, the book “goes from 0 to 60 in the blink of an eye,<\/a>” which might be a good thing for a sports car, but not for a math book. It doesn’t help that I say “anyone can learn math from this book, regardless of their mathematical background” in the marketing copy. I need to do something to fix Chapter 1, and soon.<\/p>\n

So what am I going to do about it, then? Write, of course\u2014what else can a writer do? I’m going to prioritize the basicmath<\/a> project and write the best sequence of introductory math lessons that ever existed! I’ll then use these explanations to beef up\u00a0 Chapter 1 to make it a solid foundation. I think adding 20\u201340 more pages will be enough, so the book won’t get that much thicker. It’s not just about adding though, I think Chapter 1 could use better organization, flow, and clarity of explanations.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the basicmath project overlaps well with my planned social media campaigns that will push the message “learn math; math is useful,” as well as the math lessons by email<\/a>. February is gonna be very<\/em> mathematical!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The goal for the NO BULLSHIT guide to MATH & PHYSICS was to make a concise textbook that teaches university-level calculus and mechanics in a nice “combined package.” The math fundamentals chapter grew out of the need to introduce the prerequisite material that many students often lack. I didn’t want to be like “y’all should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-content","category-prerequisites","category-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=990"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1469,"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions\/1469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minireference.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}