Re: [Fhsst-authors] worked examples in maths

[Sam Halliday]

Clare Johnson wrote:
> I think there is a place both for worked examples and for exercises in
> the maths text (I don't know how you are doing it in physics)... the
> worked examples in the midst of the chapters are good to illustrate the
> method you are describing, otherwise it is quite sterile and might be
> difficult to relate the exercises at the end of the chapter to specific
> portions of the text. those exercises are more useful for mixing up a
> whole lot of concepts to see whether the little bits in the chapter have
> been consolidated into one marvellous whole.

i know what you mean; its very hard to decide when something is a worked
example to help kids answer exam-type questions, and when it is an example
necessary to show a valid point. i don't want there to be so many worked
examples in the main text that it gets really hard to find the actual back
bone content... so i was thinking of maybe copying the entire
chapter/section/subsection structure again under a part entitled "worked
examples" so that it would be really obvious which examples went along with
which sections, but not clutter things.

i think i will encourage examples which show valid points to be inline in
the text, but for everything else to be moved to the end of the chapters or
into this new part... with solutions nearby.

at the moment, i am just putting all examples into a file
maths/examples.tex while i move everything into the new structure. ill work
out the examples stuff for good when all that is done. but they are
definitely a very important part of the book.

> but I like solutions at the end of the book - it's more work but those
> were my favourite textbooks at school and varsity :) even if it is just
> the odd numbered exercises or something.

we may as well put all the solutions in, but i am favouring this too :-)

cheers,
Sam
-- 
Free High School Science Texts
  http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst/
Sam's Homepages
  http://fommil.homeunix.org/~samuel/
  http://www.ma.hw.ac.uk/~samuel/

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