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Gelfand's Algebra


wapiti
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Thanks, Mike, for mentioning this book in another thread. I forgot I had it. Has anyone used this? Would you describe your experience - what your purpose was (alg 1 fresh instruction or review or supplement), how old your student was, etc.? Anyone work straight through or did you pick lessons or problems? Time it took? Gelfand is often mentioned but I can't recall reading about actual use of this particular book.

 

All I can tell by flipping through it is that it's deep but brief, an attractive combination, and probably can't be scheduled, similar to AoPS. Would you say it's more direct/less discovery than AoPS or is there lots of discovering due to wrangling with hard problems?

 

Thanks for any comments you may have :)

 

Eta, I came across an interesting Wu review posted by Myrtle http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Gelfand.pdf

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Honestly, we use it as enrichment.  It is very poor as a primary curriculum, because it has no solutions.  But, the theory is great.  I especially love the sections on "how to devise an impossible problem" for the evil teacher.  They really show the reader how a problem is constructed, which allows them to see new ways of deconstructing problems.

 

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We used Gelfand's algebra lightly as a supplemental source of challenge problems during the kids' Jacobs Algebra year. Later on, I did use Gelfand's Trigonometry as their primary trig book. As I remember, it took about 2-3 months to finish completely. It's a wonderful & complete trig course for kids who want to learn the mathematical theory as opposed to the engineering applications. You won't find the typical applied trig problems that you'd find in other texts, so I did add in a few Dolciani word problems one day just to give them exposure.

 

Mike is correct. There aren't any published solutions to Gelfand's texts. I worked through all the trig book problems with my oldest & have them saved in a folder (and am always glad to answer any questions).

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I believe Karin (who has a new forum name that I can't remember right now) used Gelfand with her daughter several years ago.  Also, another poster on here (Adrian?) posted solutions online, but I don't know where they are or if they're still up.

 

 

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