What the best and the worst textbooks you used in school? For me:
Favorite
Great problems, and very conceptual
Least Favorite (tie):
Hated the lack of justification for the formulas, and it was something like $150
Unintelligible with it's hand-waving arguments for correctness, runtime, memory-usage, etc for its algorithms. CLRS is 100x better
This so far has been the best textbook I've read and that's not saying much, because the course with it expects you to basically memorize a ridiculous amount of info for the exams and the exams are all essay and recall questions, no multiple choice!
This has been my worst book. The conceptual examples and problems did not help at all in the latter half the of teh book and was very repe ive.
I think I like Stewarts better, I use that as a supplement. Anton's Calculus companion helps somewhat.
Great read. I was like five chapters ahead the whole semester. It had some pretty tripped out photos too. I don't have a least favorite...yet.
favorite. It has everything any undergrad would ever need to know about psychology.
The only professor I ever had that made us read a book that he wrote. This was lame.
My favorite textbook was probably Bart Ehrman's The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings:
There were a ton of texts that I really loved in school, but most weren't traditional textbooks once I got into American Studies classes since it's not really a standardized discipline. If you haven't read Honky by Dalton Conley or The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii by Bailey and Farber, both are well worth the time.
The worst one I had isn't even in print anymore:
I learned a grand total of nothing from that book, and the prof spent more time talking about how he taught Ernesto Ancira in Mexico than anything else. He conveniently managed to get that in almost every single class.
This book would make most posters heads explode.
the ones that cost a lot
Where did you take that class?
The worst one I had isn't even in print anymore:
I learned a grand total of nothing from that book, and the prof spent more time talking about how he taught Ernesto Ancira in Mexico than anything else. He conveniently managed to get that in almost every single class.
Favorites:
And the HUGE paleontology book I had several years ago, but can't remember the name of.
Least favorite was my statistics book, which I sold the moment I was able to and can't remember the name of. Really basic, really boring.
UTSA - the author was my prof, that's why we had to buy the book. And actually, he also made us buy his book on pre-Columbian art because, you know, that fits right in with a survey class on European art from 1400-1900.
Oh, fun thread.
I can only narrow it down to two favorites, but my least favorite is definite.
Favorites:
Beautiful, clear diagrams and straightforward writing.
The most entertainingly written math textbook I ever used. After the class ended I spent several weeks taking it to cafes and reading the chapters we didn't get to.
Least Favorites:
Kind of the opposite of the above. If there was a choice between a clear way to express something and a needlessly complicated one, the author chose the complicated one every time. One example that is burned into my brain, "Problems of this type may be solved in two distinct ways, depending on the initial conditions. In the following chapter, we will explore both ways simultaneously." And then he did, alternating which technique he was using with every paragraph.
Best...
Worst...
Yeah I took that class and he always would bring up that one dude that you were talking about earlier. I knew that book looked familiar and the description of his stories.
He was pretty awful. I never took another art history class at UTSA after that. The American Studies faculty was top-notch, though.
I hate them all.
Best book:
Worst book:
I can't find a picture for Linear Algebra: Murdoch, D. C.
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