Crimson Wife Posted August 19, 2013 Share Posted August 19, 2013 Didn't want to hijack the other thread, but the mention of "Calculus Without Tears" piqued my interest. Is it this series? http://www.berkeleyscience.com/index.htm Is it really accessible to a bright middle school student? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quark Posted August 19, 2013 Share Posted August 19, 2013 I found the presentation dry (especially given the title I was hoping for some more hand holding I guess) and the book's layout rather unwieldy. I returned it after looking through the preliminary pages. This was about two or more years ago before my child was ready for it so I decided to return it and wait till he is older to order again. Not sure if it's helpful but it will give the post a bump at least. ETA: forgot to add that since then, I've found Thompson's book (free pdf) and prefer the presentation to CWT. We've only worked through the first chapter so far so nothing much to report yet. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted August 19, 2013 Share Posted August 19, 2013 Totally off topic... thinking of the current thread where the OP was bothered by a title including the word "gifted", it occurred to me that Calculus without tears would really bug me because of the title. Suggesting that tears should be the norm and that "without tears" was somewhat of an exception - what kind of view about math does that transmit? 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
quark Posted August 19, 2013 Share Posted August 19, 2013 Totally off topic... thinking of the current thread where the OP was bothered by a title including the word "gifted", it occurred to me that Calculus without tears would really bug me because of the title. Suggesting that tears should be the norm and that "without tears" was somewhat of an exception - what kind of view about math does that transmit? We've learned to deal with titles like these with a derisive "Ha!" or when we are feeling kindly, "think of all the poor souls who believe this." Not only do we get a little giggle out of it but also, son learns not to fall so easily for advertising language (I was an advertising copywriter at one time so I feel it is even more of a responsibility for me to educate him in that area). I think it is indeed a skill to look past the titles and keep an open mind. It's sad because some of these books can be quite good (my DH has one or two of the Dummies series for example that are quite fun to read and not dumbed down). 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
serendipitous journey Posted August 21, 2013 Share Posted August 21, 2013 oh, we do have this book (Calculus Without Tears) and for A. right now I really like it. So far. ;) And CrimsonWife, it is the site you linked though I think you can get them at Amazon too. We have only the first volume of the 3 (or perhaps 4) volume set. It only covers constant velocity motion. FWIW, there is no way A. could handle the lovely book Quark linked. A. is 7 years old (nearly 8), and has moved through Singapore's elementary books and a good chunk of a Singapore 7th grade program. It has been really hard to keep him in the sweet spot, because he is temperamental (and requires structure -- casual is not a good approach for this child); he is not savant in arithmetic, and he's so little he keeps forgetting things; and he's not so good at reading math yet -- he just doesn't process long strings of numbers & symbols very well. Huge, specific numbers in an equation (or a string of numbers) are hard for him to parse, which caused me to drop AoPS PreA which otherwise was a good fit. I was looking for something to spruce up our conceptual maths -- A. is ready for some fancier concepts, but needs to hammer in his facts constantly or at least use them a lot. Which he was forgetting when we were in 7th grade maths. So this summer I spent using Galore Parks math and some other stuff, and introduced the Calculus Without Tears book on the recommendation of Janice at Rainbow Resource. It has an old-school feel, very plain, and he can usually do the problems on his own. They are very repetitive and so we skip about 1/2 of them. There are about 74 lessons in the first book, which covers "constant velocity motion". I plan to cover this book over this year though perhaps we will speed it up. I will say that the first lessons seem a bit tedious, a child does a chunk of filling in arithmetically simple tables (for example, all the positions of a runner moving at 5 yards/second for seconds 0 -10). But they are building up an intuition for how numbers work and the concepts are making sense to A. I do look at each lesson and briefly teach the new concept (this takes 2-5 minutes). Also they do not take much time. Probably 10 - 15 minutes so far. At the end of the book the child is drawing graphs, and shading areas, corresponding to a problem such as: velocity (t) = 2 across the interval from t = 0 to t = 10 (this is written in integral notation) and then evaluating the area of the rectangle described. The maths are very simple, but I think this will build a good feel for the notation and the physical meaning of these ideas in describing motion in time. And the last problem (aside from cumulative review) is: "The solution to the second order DE [differential equation] p''(t) = 0 with an initial velocity p'(0) = v(0) = 3 yards per second and a starting position p(0) = 25 yard line is p(t) = ______ * t + _________". Finally, from the intro: "These lessons were written to teach calculus to a student in 4th grade. The formal prerequisite is decimal arithmetic, that is, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing easy decimal numbers. Some familiarity with rate problems is also desirable ... Surprisingly, the fundamentals of calculus are easy and intuitive. Here is a shocker: differentiation is a generalization of the formula velocity = distance/time, and integration is a generalization of the formula distance = velocity * time! The presentation is rigorous in essence but not weighted down by technical details. The goals is for the student to understand calculus and differential equations the way someone who works with them every day understands them, with a good intuitive grasp of the fundamental concepts." HTH! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
serendipitous journey Posted August 21, 2013 Share Posted August 21, 2013 Totally off topic... thinking of the current thread where the OP was bothered by a title including the word "gifted", it occurred to me that Calculus without tears would really bug me because of the title. Suggesting that tears should be the norm and that "without tears" was somewhat of an exception - what kind of view about math does that transmit? :lol: but what about those households where math tears are the norm? I had to laugh thinking about your point -- which is a good one -- b/c I still remember crying when, late one night, DH told me that .9999 (repeating infinitely) = 1 and proved it (10 x - 9 x = 1x. If you do this with .9 repeating you get that it equals 1). I was totally distraught, as a matter of fact, whenever I thought about it because it seemed like a parlor trick; fortunately a friend cheered me up with the alternative explanation that in number theory there exists this perspective: two numbers are different only if you can somewhere slide an "edge" between them. Since the .9 goes on forever and there is no intermediate number between it and 1 there is no place to separate them with an edge. At any rate, perhaps the tears are just one sign of a healthy seriousness about matters mathematical? or an unhealthy seriousness, but that's discouraging ... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
serendipitous journey Posted August 21, 2013 Share Posted August 21, 2013 We've learned to deal with titles like these with a derisive "Ha!" or when we are feeling kindly, "think of all the poor souls who believe this." Not only do we get a little giggle out of it but also, son learns not to fall so easily for advertising language (I was an advertising copywriter at one time so I feel it is even more of a responsibility for me to educate him in that area). I think it is indeed a skill to look past the titles and keep an open mind. It's sad because some of these books can be quite good (my DH has one or two of the Dummies series for example that are quite fun to read and not dumbed down). Charlie Trotter wrote Gourmet Cooking for Dummies. It is super. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nansk Posted August 21, 2013 Share Posted August 21, 2013 Didn't want to hijack the other thread, but the mention of "Calculus Without Tears" piqued my interest. Is it this series? http://www.berkeleyscience.com/index.htm Is it really accessible to a bright middle school student? Nothing to add to your thread, but I'm just happy to see piqued instead of "peaked". 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Wife Posted August 21, 2013 Author Share Posted August 21, 2013 Nothing to add to your thread, but I'm just happy to see piqued instead of "peaked". Too funny! One of my brothers is a super-smart guy but an atrocious speller (weak visual memory I suspect) and he frequently asks me to proofread his writing to catch mistakes like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crimson Wife Posted August 21, 2013 Author Share Posted August 21, 2013 Thanks for everyone who has commented on this thread. We'll be studying physics in the 2014-2015 school year so maybe I'll try CWT next summer as an intro to that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmmetler Posted August 21, 2013 Share Posted August 21, 2013 I have it on the shelf, but haven't played with it much yet. Too many books, too little time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dovrar Posted July 30, 2016 Share Posted July 30, 2016 I found the presentation dry (especially given the title I was hoping for some more hand holding I guess) and the book's layout rather unwieldy. I returned it after looking through the preliminary pages. This was about two or more years ago before my child was ready for it so I decided to return it and wait till he is older to order again. Not sure if it's helpful but it will give the post a bump at least. ETA: forgot to add that since then, I've found Thompson's book (free pdf) and prefer the presentation to CWT. We've only worked through the first chapter so far so nothing much to report yet. Started reading Thompson's book and LOVE it! I may have to track down a print copy of this one. ;) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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