Customer Reviews

Schaum's Outline of Mathematics for Liberal Arts Majors (Schaum's Outline Series)

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I wrote this book as an inexpensive resource for students taking a college course entitled "Math for the Liberal Arts," "Math for Poets," or any other such basic course designed to satisfy the general education math requirement for graduation. This was a difficult task because these courses cover a very wide variety of topics: graphs, sets, logic, voting, fair division, fractals, etc. I covered all of these and more, though it is possible that your professor might include one or two topics not covered by this book.

I have taught a Math for the Liberal Arts course many times at MCLA, a small state college in Massachusetts, so I have a fairly solid understanding of the sorts of students enrolled in these classes. Often, these students have been taught mathematics poorly in the past, and thus have a very negative opinion of it. Other students have a decent grasp of the basics, but are more interested in a wide survey of mathematics than a course on a single topic (calculus, statistics, etc.). With this audience in mind, I took care to include brief, clear explanations for the all the topics covered in the book. Formulas without explanations can be bewildering, but long-winded mathematical ramblings can be even worse.

Anyone who picks up this book ought to be able to learn useful and important mathematical concepts in a very short period of time, even if that person has only a basic understanding of arithmetic and algebra. This book ought to be a benefit for a person currently taking a course like Math for the Liberal Arts. While this book does not cover any advanced mathematics topics completely, it will also serve as a gentle introduction to geometry, statistics, trigonometry, and precalculus.

As well, this book introduces a number of advanced and interesting results in mathematics, for example: Russell's paradox, Godel's Theorem, Cantor's diagonal proof, non-Euclidean geometry, the fourth dimension, fractals, and the traveling salesman problem.

I hope you enjoy it!