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Rating: 
Summary: Good slection of topics, but poorly presented and explained.
Review: This has been the text for MAT 105 at the University of Georgia for several years, and I have taught the course from it ten times or so. On the whole, I am quite unhappy with the book. In writing an elementary math text, there often must be a compromise between rigor and ease of comprehension. This book, however, is poor in both areas. It is both mathematically unrigorous and difficult for students to read. In several important cases, principles are stated which are not merely unrigorous, but are actually incorrect. This would be somewhat forgivable if the book were more readable; but students cannot understand the vaguely worded definitions and theorems in this book any more than they could understand the correct, rigorous statements. The redeeming feature of this book is the selection of topics in it. The topics, such as graph theory, voting, game theory, and scheduling algorithms, require little or no algebra. In this way, students can improve their mathematical and analytic abilites without being subjected to the streams of equations many of them have been trained to fear. Also, each topic covered is directly applicable in a way which is visible to students, which helps hold interest up.
Rating:
Summary: Good slection of topics, but poorly presented and explained.
Review: This has been the text for MAT 105 at the University of Georgia for several years, and I have taught the course from it ten times or so. On the whole, I am quite unhappy with the book. In writing an elementary math text, there often must be a compromise between rigor and ease of comprehension. This book, however, is poor in both areas. It is both mathematically unrigorous and difficult for students to read. In several important cases, principles are stated which are not merely unrigorous, but are actually incorrect. This would be somewhat forgivable if the book were more readable; but students cannot understand the vaguely worded definitions and theorems in this book any more than they could understand the correct, rigorous statements. The redeeming feature of this book is the selection of topics in it. The topics, such as graph theory, voting, game theory, and scheduling algorithms, require little or no algebra. In this way, students can improve their mathematical and analytic abilites without being subjected to the streams of equations many of them have been trained to fear. Also, each topic covered is directly applicable in a way which is visible to students, which helps hold interest up.
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