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nftaussig
Sep 01, 2014nftaussig rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
Danica McKellar, an actress who graduated summa cum laude with a degree in mathematics from U. C. L. A., has written a supplement to a geometry text. As was the case with her earlier mathematics books - Kiss My Math, Math Doesn't Suck, and Hox X: Algebra Exposed - this book contains a combination of lessons on mathematics, personal advice (which is sound), and testimonials from women who worked hard to understand mathematics and now use it in their careers. However, this book is weaker than her previous work. She starts with a discussion of logic and the importance of deductive reasoning, but then assumes many of the important theorems that are ordinarily proved in a geometry course, including the Isosceles Triangle Theorem and its converse. She provides a few of the missing proofs, including the Angle Sum Theorem for Triangles and the Pythagorean Theorem, on her website, but numerous others are missing. Her decision to state many results without proof undermines her emphasis on deductive reasoning and makes the book less useful to students who will be expected to prove the theorems she chooses to simply assume. That said, the mathematics she covers is sound (with one exception), the examples are interesting, and the problems will make students who work them think. The exception is her treatment of transiviity, which she falsely conflates with substitution. She correctly states that if two segments are congruent to the same segment, then they are congruent to each other. However, she claims the reason is transitivity when it should be substitution. The relation less than is transitive since a < b and b < c imply a < c. However, it is not true that if two numbers are less than the same number, then they are less than each other. For instance, 4 < 5 and 3 < 5, but the statement 4 < 3 is false.