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RE: List of 'good' geometry textbooks
Posted:
May 24, 2007 10:30 PM
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I have used the Rhoad Milauskas Whipple book for years and years in high
school. It is light on the logic part, although it has lots of proofs. It
pretty much overlooks the parallel postulate and some of the things Hilbert
pointed out as being important. It also has virtually no applications.
But, it has by far the best collection of geometry problems of any book I
have seen. So, I fill in the missing logic and theory as appropriate, as
well as applications here and there, and have the students do many
interesting problems every night. If you are unfamiliar with the book, look
at the problem set for the chapter where the Pythagorean Theorem is
introduced for starters.
-----Original Message-----
From: approve@support1.mathforum.org [mailto:approve@support1.mathforum.org]
On Behalf Of mathwonk
Sent: Monday, May 21, 2007 6:31 PM
To: approve@support1.mathforum.org;
geometry-pre-college@support1.mathforum.org
Subject: Re: List of 'good' geometry textbooks
i looked in vain for the promised review of these books. I am a longtime
fan of harold jacobs' book, first edition, which my 8 year old enjoyed, and
was saddened by the watering down of the 3rd edition, rendering it less fun
and less rigorous at the same time!
that is hard to do, but they not only took out much of the wonderful
discussion of proofs and logic, enlivened by hilarious rhymes and puzzles
from lewis carroll, but also removed many of the witty cartoons, replacing
them with unfunny ones, as if not only logic but also cleverness were evil
somehow in learning geometry.
So I wanted to know how jacobs' first or second edition compared to whipple,
rhoad, milauskas. i am choosing for a college course for students who have
been denied a course including logic and proof such as you teach.
so i need to review basic ideas of geometry, plus reinforce proof, and also
touch very lightly on some of the logical errors of euclid, but not so as to
ruin the fun of the course. (puzzling little things like the fact that
harold jacobs does not discuss in the 3rd edition's proof of the concurrence
of medians of a triangle, why the point constructed lies outside the
triangle instead of inside.)
thanks alan.
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