BINGO – Font (though truthfully, you should not go to this book for math information)
Let me just start by just saying that this book is not a good book for learning or even remembering anything related to math. Overall, this book feels more like a chance for author Liz Strachan to reflect on her 36 years of mathematics education experience and boast about much her students just absolutely loved math and how easy math was for all of her students. This book is 161 pages long and contains 66 chapters, an introduction, and a post-script. Not an epilogue. A post-script. There just isn’t enough care and depth given to any topic and too many topics are covered. The chapters really aren’t chapters. They’re just a couple of paragraphs.
There are errors in this book. I’m shocked that so many made their way past editing. For example, in one chapter, Strachan instructs her readers to multiple two numbers and then double the result. What is typed in her book is
3 x 5 = 15 x 2 = 30
which is a mathematically incorrect statement. This is a juvenile error that students of mathematics make. When using statements of equality on a single line, every portion of the equation must be true. Three times five does not equal 30. I physically had to put the book down at this point and take a walk to calm down. At another point she states that anything divided by zero is infinity which, again, is factually incorrect. That’s just really bad math.
Maybe if you know something about math, you might be saying, “Well the limit of 1/x as x approaches 0 can be treated as infinite and maybe limits are just outside the scope of this book.” Wrong! She introduces limits just 10 pages later in a “chapter” on Isaac Newton.
In another “chapter”, Strachan covers SOHCAHTOA and without any additional comment, states “the boys used to chant SOH CAH TOA in what they imagined was a Chinese accent.” So, what I’m reading is that these students frequently engaged in racist behavior, and not only did the teacher not do anything about it, but also thought that is was such a cute moment that it warranted a mention in her book.
This is a bad book. Do not read it.