Author Archives: Eriko Hironaka

Why textbooks?

Do we really need textbooks?  In this age of swelling enrolments in undergraduate math classes, students with diverse interests and backgrounds, new modes of teaching, and alternative media, are textbooks too rigid?  Are they too expensive?  Would it be better … Continue reading

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Author Interview: John Erdman

John Erdman is an Emeritus Associate Professor of Mathematics at Portland State University.  Over several decades, he has devoted himself to developing problems based courses, and one outcome is the recently published book: A Problems Based Course in Advanced Calculus.   … Continue reading

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Textbooks for Problems Based Teaching

The traditional approach to teaching rigorous, proof-based mathematics is to provide students with models of excellent mathematical exposition and let students learn by emulation.  Typically students will first absorb by reading the textbook and listening to lectures, and then they … Continue reading

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Author Interview: Marty Weissman

Martin H. Weissman, Professor of Mathematics at University of California, Santa Cruz, has recently published a book with the AMS called An Illustrated Theory of Numbers. How does one illustrate number theory?   Weissman does it in a visually appealing … Continue reading

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Read-together math books for kids

Young kids love books like Goodnight Moon and parents love to read it to them.   Does it matter whether the toddler thinks of the moon, the rhythms of the day, the rhythm of the words, the magic of transitions and … Continue reading

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The Web and Books of the Future

Given the way the internet has become firmly entrenched in our lives, how do you think books of the future will look and how will these “new books” be read and used?   Is the web making books obsolete, or will … Continue reading

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Solutions to Exercises in Math Textbooks

This is a question for mathematics instructors: How do you feel about having solutions available for the exercises in a math textbook? What if the solutions are available on the internet? Some colleges and universities have guidelines for how instructors … Continue reading

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Libraries and the art of browsing

Those of you over a certain age may remember when searching for math resources meant going to the library and perusing the subject catalog, spending time in shelving sections devoted to a topic, or leafing through heavy volumes of math … Continue reading

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Author Interview: John Roe

John Roe studied with Michael Atiyah at Oxford, and his research has focused on the interaction of index theory and large scale or “coarse” geometry. After teaching at Oxford for twelve years he became Professor of Mathematics at Penn State in 1998. … Continue reading

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Author Interview: Jennifer Schultens

Jennifer Schultens is Professor of Mathematics at University of California, Davis.  Her book Introduction to 3-Manifolds guides beginning graduate students through the foundations of low-dimensional topology to specialized topics such as triangulations of 3-manifolds, normal surface theory and Heegaard splittings.  … Continue reading

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