For the text review assignment I choose “Mathematics in Life, Society & the World,” by Parks, Musser, Burton and Siebler. The title of the book caught my attention because it addresses math in real life situations and I tend to understand mathematical concepts better if they are used in real life situations.

 

Before selecting a reference book from the list, I already had a few topics in mind that I planned to research. I will address them further on in this paper. Before I discuss those topics, let me say that I thought most math books were pretty much the same and I found out differently.

 

The table of contents seemed to be the best place to start because it gives an overview of the book at a glance. While doing a side by side comparison with our book and Parks and Musser, I noticed that these two books are not quite the same. The chapter topics and the subject matter vary quite a lot. Both books begin with problem solving techniques but by the second chapter Parks and Musser leave out one of my favorite subjects which is infinity. While I was flipping through Parks and Musser’s book looking for any sign of infinity, I happened to notice that the layout, content, and presentation of material resemble that of my other math book, “For All Practical Purposes.”  However, I prefer the layout and content of “For All Practical Purposes” much better. I thought surely Infinity and Aleph Null must be in Parks and Musser book somewhere. Nope! No where to be found. Well, if that isn’t a good enough reason to put the book back on the shelf, I don’t know what else is!

 

The topics that I had in mind to research were some wonderful tables that I found to be quite useful in our book. I wanted to see if the new book had these great tables as well. The first is Pascal’s Triangle. When I was having difficulties solving the last few probability problems in chapter 11, I turned to Pascal’s Triangle. After learning how to use the table, solving the last three problems became so easy. Not only does our book have a detailed section on Pascal’s Triangle and the Binomial Theorem, it is also laid out in an easier to understand format. Parks and Musser have a very small section in chapter one which talks about pattern strategies and problem solving. The new book shows a smaller version of Pascal’s Triangle to demonstrate inductive reasoning but gives no instructions on how the triangle can be used as an effective tool for solving probability problems.

 

I can’t begin to express how much I appreciate helpful tables and tools that are conveniently disbursed throughout our text book. They can save time and frustration. This leads me to comment on yet other amazing table that is in chapter twelve of our book. The topic is Statistics, table 10, The Normal Distribution, Areas under the Standard Normal Curve.

 

Unfortunately, this particular table was not in Parks and Musser’s book. After realizing the table wasn’t in the book, I decided to explore the section anyway and see what the book did cover in the way of Common Measures of Central Tendency and Normal Distribution. I was hoping to gather more information on this topic because I was again struggling with other homework problems at the end of chapter twelve and thought perhaps, I might get a little extra help by researching the same topic in Parks and Musser book.

 

In this section Parks and Musser describe computing the standard normal distribution and show several methods that can be used to find the area that lies between any two vertical lines. They also write about the different deviations and show how percentages are distributed under the z-axis, called data axis. Again I found the material in this book a bit watered down. Unfortunately, I was not able to get the information I was seeking. I gave up and continued looking for the information I need in our text book.

 

It seems to me that our text book teaches a higher level of math or simply goes into more detail with each topic. For instance, in the Measures of Central Tendency section, Miller and Heeren define the mean, median and mode in great detail using loads of examples. There are graphs and tables which are used to demonstrate various applications stemming from grade point averages, baseball statistics to analyzing data. I count on the examples to nudge my knowledge base to the next level of understanding when I am struggling with a concept.

 

Parks and Musser take a different approach in presenting mean median and percentiles, yet mode is not mentioned at all, which I thought was strange. Interestingly enough, when I was going through chapter three in Descriptive Statistics – Data and Patterns, Parks and Musser go into great detail explaining Quartiles and Box and Whisker Plots. Quartiles are described to be the median of the lower half of points. The other topic discusses Box and Whisker Plots which are used so that numbers may be graphed to give an easy to view picture of the data. This technique is used to show two data’s in comparison. This section is present in a very interesting and detailed manner. Personally I found Parks and Musser had done a much better job presenting the information than Miller and Heeren.

 

There was one more thing that Parks and Musser does not cover and that is calculus. Since our class is about to cover calculus, I thought it would be good to check out what is taught on this topic but unfortunately calculus is no where to be found.

 

It is not my intention to diminish the value of Parks and Musser’s book or the authors but to merely point out the differences between styles. All books and teaching tools serve a purpose which is to teach and indeed they do just that. Each book possesses its own style and has a particular agenda that the authors convey. I appreciate that most text books continue to evolve as researchers find better ways to communicate and present materials to better suit a broader range of students.

 

For the group of students who truly get math, there might not be a need for all the bells and whistles that come with our text book. But, for those students who struggle with math, Miller and Heeren present an excellent mixture of materials. The goal is to teach and our text book combines mathematical elements that are applied for many practical purposes.