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Teacher looking for a good geometry textbook
Posted:
Mar 31, 2002 11:21 PM
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I read your message with interest. I was not aware that Moise/Downs
was out of print. (In fact, someone recently told me that it was
still in print.) You probably could not find a better book than this
one. I have looked over the one you liked, the Geometry for
Enjoyment/Challenge, and found it to have a lack of sufficiently
challenging material for the really good students. Maybe I didn't
look hard enough.
In my day the great textbook was "A Course in Geometry: Plane & Solid"
by Arthur Weeks and Jackson Adkins, from Phillips Exeter Academy
(Ginn, about 1961 or 1962). It tried to stake out a middle ground
between the really traditional books, and the newer ones that were
just starting to use the Hilbert metric and separation postulates.
Weeks & Adkins has the finest--and most challenging--set of problems I
have ever seen in a geometry book. I recently learned that someone is
still publishing this book, and that a number of schools around the
country use it in an honors geometry track. The company is called
Bates, and they have a website at batespub.com (I think). Anyone
using this textbook today obviously has to supplement it with
additional materials in certain areas, but if you want a set of
problems (proofs, numerical problems, etc.) that will challenge the
very best students, this is it.
If you are not already familiar with it, see if you can locate a copy
of "Mathematics Review Exercises" by Smith & Fagan. The last edition
of this book was about 1961 (Ginn). This book used to be very popular
for review purposes. It is organized by subject matter: algebra,
plane geometry, solid geometry, trigonometry, advanced algebra,
analytic geometry. It has wonderful (and for the most part,
difficult) problems. Some of these might be good materials for your
courses.
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