Eisworth
Homo Sapiens
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
Posts: 461
Location: Athens, OH
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 Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2005 10:46 am Post subject: 86. A Primer of Mathematical Writing - Steven G. Krantz |
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Our department has a copy of this book down in the lounge, so I picked it up the other day because I'm convinced that all of my mathematical writing sounds the same and I would love to be able to improve it.
It's a decent guide --- most of it is common sense, but he gives some good advice on organizing a research paper that I hadn't thought of before. Now if only I could get a few of my colleagues to read through this book...
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Todd Eisworth
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Ohio University |
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jeffp
Homo Sapiens
Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 990
Location: Los Gatos, CA
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| Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2005 2:47 pm Post subject: Re: 86. A Primer of Mathematical Writing - Steven G. Krantz |
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| Eisworth wrote: | | Now if only I could get a few of my colleagues to read through this book... |
When Doug & I were at the U of I, far too many years ago, there was prof in the C.S. department who taught numerical analysis. His teaching method was the following:- At the start of the semester, you went to Kinkos and bought a copy of his notes.
- Each day he read the notes to you, verbatim. In a monotone that we joked about modulating for him with a synthesizer, since he clearly couldn't do it himself.
- Every Wednesday he assigned a new set of homework and collected whatever he'd assigned the previous week.
That's it. That's all he did. There was no variation. I can't even remember him answering any questions, since no one ever asked any... we were all asleep.
Oddly, within the first week, about one third of the class stopped showing up. After the second week, we were down to half. At the end of the third week, I gave up attending class too, so I have no idea how low attendance was by the end. I do know that people slept through the lectures all the time, even when they did show up.
So instead of actually staying there, we'd all show up on Wednesday, hand in the last assignment, write down the next one, and leave. To this day I have no idea what the class was about. I remember only one phrase - "Chebyshev polynomial" - and I have no idea why it lodged in my brain. I passed, though, and that's all that I cared about.
Now all this might seem like a pointless story about bad education until you learn one important fact: at the time, this professor was the head of the committee to improve education on campus. Seriously.
I wish you luck getting you colleagues to read the book. Past experience says it isn't likely, however.
--jeffp |
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