53 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A Wretched and Horrid Book, February 4, 2002
Entering geometry for the first time ever can be an almost initimidating venture, especially for the first time geometry student. After conquering other mathematical courses successfully (like algebra and statistics), I presumed entering "Elementary Geometry for College Students," based on being given exceptional required texts from previous courses, would be a breeze. Oh how wrong I was!
"Elementary Geometry for College Students," by Daniel C. Alexander (of Parkland College) and Geralyn M. Koeberlein (of Mahomet-Seymour High School), has taught me nothing more than NOT to trust a textbook written by a couple of hack authors from unknown schools with a blatant disregard for meticulously explaining important vital and "elementary" steps as to how to arrive to certain statements, reasoning, deducing, measurements, and so much more NEEDED in successfully acheving full reign over geometry. For example, the origins of postulates and proofing are never explored, but slammed in your face, convoluting both topics along with breaking down statements from deducing a particular shape, its angles and measurements. The book's attempts at explaining triangles, convex polygons, congruent triangles, and properties of parallelograms are all but slandered together (with steps in basic algebraic mathematical equations arrogantly skipped over and presumed upon to you) without any form of thorough reason or explained steps bothered in explaining. Important theorems are disarrayed throughout with quick-step problem examples without helpful or detailed reasoning as to how the answer was ever achieved.
The authors have obviously assumed a college student has had some form of pre-geometry course prepping, and expect both instructor and student to know the advanced fundamentals without considering the beginner geometry student at all (just from judging by example and "solutions" given in each section). As a result, students will fail miserably, along with angering frustration, and discontent wonderment over what purpose geometry may ever serve toward a real-life career. Perhaps trying "Geometry for Dummies" by the infamous IDG publishing company would be a much suitable levelage to this otherwise detrimental book attempting to teach an important equation to the universe of mathematics.
By far, this textbook is the worst and most horrible book in teaching the subject of geometry!!
To professors searching a geometry book for your students: PLEASE avoid this book at all costs! You and your students don't need a textbook that presumes you know it all before diving into shapes, proofing, deducing, theorums, solids, and so forth. Most surely, there are much more superior books to this wretched and horrid title worthy of its decommissioning.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Used for class only, December 7, 2008
This review is from: Elementary Geometry For College Students (Hardcover)
I got this book for a required math class. My teacher is not that great at student help so this book wasn't worth much to me except to do the problems the teacher assigned. Unless you have a great teacher who is willing to take time to explain and help you, this book won't be much good to you. My teacher has lost my interest in geometry but its not the book's fault. Like I said, if you have a good teacher, the book will be worth something to you.
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Worst possible approach to Geometry in existance., September 14, 2009
This review is from: Elementary Geometry For College Students (Hardcover)
I do not recommend this book to anyone. I have taken both Geometry and Trig in High School and they were the easiest thing ever. This book complicates everything ten fold and wants you explain your reason for absolutely everything you do no matter how painfully simple it is. In the first few chapters, most of the questions are open ended. Instead of the focus of teaching you Geometry, the focus is more along the lines of teaching you Philosophy and how to go about proving things in massive detail. It even goes on to create it's own definitions of words that already exist but giving them different meanings. The actual Geometry is subtle and rushed, and you don't end up learning it unless you have an amazing teacher that steers away from the book and hopefully skips half the sections.
I really don't understand why any College in the world would use this book. But Riverside Community College only offers Geometry classes that use this book. It is absolutely the worst possible approach to Geometry.
Edit:
@Fishmael
That's great and all if you're an English major and know every single word in the English language like the back of your hand, but English majors don't have to take Geometry to get their degree. Us Engineers are good at math and problem solving. We couldn't properly structure a sentence if our life depended on it.
I am now going to Butte Community College and have advanced quite a bit since my review of this book. Luckily we have an amazing Math teacher here, Trish Cabral, that wrote her own math books for the school to use. This includes Geometry, Trigonometry, Calc, etc as she also knows how bad some of the books out there are. I tutor students in Geometry and Trigonometry now and her books make math incredibly easy to learn without a bunch of pointless fluff!
So if you are failing in a class that is using this book, it just might be the book and not you!
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