I bought an old 1963 Dolciani Algebra II text. This is a photo from a side bar about statistics.
I have other pictures posted on my blog where I was having a little fun doing "compare and contrast" with a contemporary algebra text that I have. There are no depictions of anyone in the act of doing math in the contemporary text. Technology is in the form of architecture and most of the photos are of bees, flowers, and as one commenter put it "social studies." On the other hand, almost all the photos in the 1963 book were hands-on gadgets and gizmos.
I was surprised by the quantity of word problems in the Doliciani. It may even outdo Singapore's NEM in terms of word problems and it has lots of proofs.
Why don't they make them like this anymore?
I love that photo!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteMyrtle,
ReplyDeletegiven the huge popularity of The Dangerous Book for Boys, we ought to devise The Dangerous Arithmetic Book for Boys that includes all the old arithmetic algorithms with detailed instructions for how to use the algorithms in the context of word problems about things that go fast or blow up or do both.
I bet we get a lot of girls interested, too.
"Why don't they make them like this anymore?"
ReplyDeleteMy re-encouter with that Algebra book has morphed into several different things, but I'm working on it.
Prof, I keep checking your blog :-)
ReplyDeleteI imagine I'll only understand about half of what you'll say but I'll be sure to read it.
The only thing more amazing than all of those story problems is what happens when you give one of the easy ones to a college student taking calculus and physics.
ReplyDeleteJust asking them to write down the equations is torture.
Reason: they don't have to do story problems to pass the HS exit exam, so it is not emphasized (and maybe not even taught). Those story "problems" consist of a story followed by the equations you have to solve. You don't need to read the story to solve the problem.