Customer Reviews

For All Practical Purposes: Mathematical Literacy in Today's World

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I was never a wiz at math or word problems and such. I was completely intimidated by the subject, even though I have a gift for numbers. But I have to say, this book made learning math and its universal concepts very easy and FUN to learn and apply to every-day needs. The class I took was one I will always remember as a rebirth for the hunger in learning - and this book played a large part of that.

I've taught from this book for 3 semesters. The math department at my school chose it, and I'm not entirely sure why. Granted, any "liberal arts math" text will likely be bad. The content is rather silly... it seems like the author(s) took topics from several areas (basic statistics, finance, basic probability, logic, etc) but didn't really stitch them together in any nice way. It's rare to see just a definition without several paragraphs of text to "motivate" or explain what's going on. I feel it's way too chatty and should cost a lot less.

I have used a lot of textbooks in my life, and many were pretty bad. This book is by far the worst textbook I have used in college thus far and should be avoided if possible.

It does a bad job of explaining even simple concepts such as those in graph theory and number theory, and once you get into more complex tasks - FORGET IT! Me and my classmates had to Google other explanations half the time because the book is so bad at explaining things.

Additionally, the answers to problem questions were frequently (FREQUENTLY) incorrect (or missing, in some cases). There is no quality control in this book at all.

This book was awful. It might as well have been in Chinese with how well I understood it. If it hadn't been the required text for my math class, I never would have purchased it. It's very hard to understand most of the concepts in this book, and there aren't many explanations given for why things are done they way they are. I was extremely frustrated! If you can help it, do not buy this book!

This mathematical book is the one of the most difficult that I have ever had to navigate through. The organization of this book is poor and extremely crammed at times. This cramming of words leads me to the point that there are far too many words and far too few examples on how to actually get the work done, unless you just want to go to the reviews at the back of the chapter and look up the odd numbered questions for answers. If you want a book that can help you with exampling several times throughout the chapters then this is not the book for you. The only way I would recommend this book is if it were required for a class course, so in any other case...with most irony; have fun.

This so-called "textbook" has the whole math tutoring center at my college, my classmates, and often my teacher himself at wits' end trying to decipher the author's labyrinthine mumbo-jumbo. You can pore over this book for hours and all you'll get out of it is a headache. I don't know what else to say but that, in the class that uses this book, I'm always choking on the homework, but when the tests come around, they're a breeze. (Note: the tests are written by my teacher, not the author) The author has the most impossible time trying to express ideas, but seems to think any preschooler could understand it. The problems at the ends of chapters are ridiculous, more often than not redundant and riddled with allusions to things we're not exactly taught how to do by the chapters themselves. This is the most infuriating math book I've ever laid eyes on. I myself am rather math-phobic, but there are math buffs on all sides of me who completely agree this book is awful, laborious, wearying, and downright inexplicable. If your instructor plans to teach out of this book, wave the red flag on it. This is not a math textbook. It's a lifeless mathematical wannabe-magnum-opus that has no educational value whatsoever. There is no way in the world I'd call this "money well spent." So please warn your math teachers that "For All Practical Purposes" is the bane of math students everywhere. It's too late for me and my peers; save yourselves.

The book arrived on time and as described. I was very happy with the sender.