Um_2_4 Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 So I just sent an email to the publisher of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Galileo-Renaissance-Scientist-Astronomer-Makers/dp/0791086283/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377666629&sr=8-1&keywords=galileo+mcneese (I got it used for a deal). I found that while the dates in the text agree with most references on Galileo, the "timeline" in the back is WAY off. Like it has Galileo going to University of Pisa at the age of 2 , oh and he was born 20 years too early, and every other date is off, EXCEPT his death, 1642. The text has the correct dates, it is just the timeline that is off. Weird, huh? So anyone else found a MAJOR issue in a school book (not just a wrong math answer or two) and if so did the publisher respond if you contacted them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idnib Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 I've worked for a major publisher and we published errata on the web site and corrected things in subsequent printings. I don't recall that we ever got back to someone specifically, but I guess if the error was large enough we might have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Corin Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 Minimus book 1 had a timeline with zero AD in it. I contacted the author (I know her slightly) and she was very embarrassed - I don't think she 'writes' the graphics and she hadn't noticed. I don't know if she was able to change it thereafter. L Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 Sure. I've seen errors of dates many, many times. Especially when the dates are somewhat disputed, I've seen them put down dates that don't make sense at all. And a couple of times I've found math problems with the wrong answer. I know I found one in MM maybe about a month ago. I don't want to say I'm not bothered by that... but it doesn't make me shocked or anything. Sometimes a book has too many errors or a pattern of errors and that's a problem, but in a math book with hundreds of problems, one with the wrong answer in the answer key? Eh. We'll live. And a history book that gets nearly everything right but misses a date? Again, I'm not too upset. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EKS Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 It is very common to find math problems with incorrect answers in the back of the book (or in the teacher's edition), so common in fact, that when I don't find an error in a text, I am impressed. It's also extremely common to find egregious grammatical errors and typos. I know I've found other types of factual errors other than incorrect answers for math problems, but I can't think of them at the moment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erin Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 Minimus book 1 had a timeline with zero AD in it. I contacted the author (I know her slightly) and she was very embarrassed - I don't think she 'writes' the graphics and she hadn't noticed. I don't know if she was able to change it thereafter. L The graphics are usually outsource, if I'm not mistaken. (I have an aunt who has done textbook artwork for about 30 years) I can think of very few textbooks where there wasn't something wrong, either minor or major. It's never occurred to me to report it, though! And in this day and age, I'll bet it's fairly easy to do so... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8filltheheart Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 Yes. A major one.......I personally believe that MCT's method of incorporating supporting quotes into essays is faulty and therefore the instruction is poor and not what I would use for writing instruction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Um_2_4 Posted August 28, 2013 Author Share Posted August 28, 2013 I think it was just so funny (DS and I were seriously laughing, University at 2??, what is this LOF :laugh: ) that I am kind of curious if I got one from a batch of misprints or if they are all like this. It is a rather small publisher from what I can tell (not Random House or the like). I can see a date or too being off or if all these dates were disputed by historians, but I think most of these dates are recent enough to have pretty reliable records. It was like the person who put the timeline didn't do ANY research other than the year he died, nor did they read the book. :huh: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belacqua Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 We just started a math text that came with a full sheet of errata tucked in (for which I am grateful). I love when the corrections are attributed: "On page 29, replace 'numbers n' by 'numbers n greater than or equal to 4.' Thanks to Art Benjamin for pointing this out." And this might just be a stylistic choice rather than an error, but it struck me as funny. A nature book described the owl not as being at the top of the food chain but at the top of the food pyramid. I wonder how many servings of owl we should be getting daily for peak health? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiana Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 And this might just be a stylistic choice rather than an error, but it struck me as funny. A nature book described the owl not as being at the top of the food chain but at the top of the food pyramid. I wonder how many servings of owl we should be getting daily for peak health? I don't know, but maybe you should be going to an owl-you-can-eat restaurant? :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
three4me Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 Not exactly a school book, but I was reading my kids The Scrambled States of America, and in the back it lists Minneapolis as the capitol of Minnesota. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Corin Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 When I taught English as a Foreign Language, every text book went on about London being foggy. Which it really hasn't been very since the Clean Air Act. Of 1956. L Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garddwr Posted August 28, 2013 Share Posted August 28, 2013 When I taught English as a Foreign Language, every text book went on about London being foggy. Which it really hasn't been very since the Clean Air Act. Of 1956. L So was the "fog" really smog? How did the clean air act change the amount of fog? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwik Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 I don't think smog was a word when they started referring to it as fog - if you know what I mean. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cosmos Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 Yes. A major one.......I personally believe that MCT's method of incorporating supporting quotes into essays is faulty and therefore the instruction is poor and not what I would use for writing instruction. What does MCT teach about quotes? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cosmos Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 To answer the OP, certainly I have found mistakes in textbooks. I have occasionally sent notes to the publisher if a "send errata here" address was easy to find. Once I received a note back from the author thanking me, but usually I have not received any response. A few dates wrong on a timeline does not strike me as a "major error", or at least no more so than a few wrong answers in the back of a math book. Mistakes happen. *shrug* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8filltheheart Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 What does MCT teach about quotes? In AAW the writing instruction is based on student examples. A quick summarization of problems that I believe exist would be too many block quotes, using quotes as the argument vs supporting the writer's contention, and improper paragraph development. Here is one link with more info. http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/418841-ack-there-are-spelling-errors-in-my-mct/?p=4237958 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chrysalis Academy Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 I think it was in MCT's Paragraph Town where there is a passage describing insects as vertebrates . . . This horrified my dd, who was studying entomology at the time. :scared: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Corin Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 So was the "fog" really smog? How did the clean air act change the amount of fog? Yes: the fog was actually smog. Being on the river, London gets mist occasionally these days. But I don't remember thick fog in the whole time I lived there (three years). The 'pea soupers' were lethal: in the last big one, in 1952, 4,000 extra people died in a few days. There are good photos here. L Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NittanyJen Posted August 29, 2013 Share Posted August 29, 2013 I have found several textbooks that teach that airplalnes fly due to the Bernoulli effect; the big problem lies in how they explain this to the kids-- they start off fine: they state that the air flowing over the wing travels faster to reach the back of the wing than the air flowing under the wing, and this produces lift (okay, so far, so good; physicists generally agree that a combination of the Bernoulli effect and Newton's 2nd law are responsible for planes not falling from the sky). However, the explanation for how the BE works is fatally flawed; they tell the kids that the air over the top travels faster because it has to reach the back of the wing at the same time as the air flowing under the wing. This part is just . . . wrong. Even a moment's thought should tell you that it is wrong-- why should the air on the bottom care whether it wins a footrace with the air on top of the wing? It doesn't. The molecules aren't friends. They didn't go to school together. They are moving indpendently of one another, and this explanation is a fallacy, sometimes called "The equal transit time fallacy." Better than our thought experiment, actual experimental data have proven that this line of thinking is in error, and if you encounter this fallacy in your physics books, please do not teach it to your kids. So why does this explanation persist in physics books? Because the real explanation is a bit more difficult, and I'm not even qualified to say whether there is a universally agreed-upon, satisfactory answer. Here is one reference (yes, it's wikipedia, but you can follow threads to more real sources to your heart's content): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_transit-time_fallacy#.22Popular.22_explanation_based_on_equal_transit-time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.