Product Description

The need for improved mathematics education at the high school and college levels has never been more apparent than in the 1990s. As early as the 1960s, I.M. Gelfand and his colleagues in the USSR thought hard about this same question and developed a style for presenting basic mathematics in a clear and simple form that engaged the curiosity and intellectual interest of thousands of school and college students. These same ideas, this development, are available in the present books to any student who is willing to read, to be stimulated, and to learn. Algebra is an elementary algebra text from one of the leading mathematicians of the world - a major contribution to the teaching of the very first high school level course in a centuries old topic - refreshed by the author's inimitable pedagogical style and deep understanding of mathematics and how it is taught and learned.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #608025 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 150 pages

Review
"The idea behind teaching is to expect students to learn why things are true, rather than have them memorize ways of solving a few problems, as most of our books have done. [This] same philosophy lies behind the current text by Gelfand and Shen. There are specific 'practical' problems but there is much more development of the ideas . . . [The authors] have shown how to write a serious yet lively look at algebra."

a "The American Mathematics Monthly

"Were Algebra to be used solely for supplementary reading, it could be wholeheartedly recommended to any high school student of any teacher . . . In fact, given the long tradition of mistreating algebra as a disjointed collection of techniques in the schools, there should be some urgency in making this book compulsory reading for anyone interested in learning mathematics."

a "The Mathematical Intelligencer