[Fhsst-maths] Re: FHSST Maths

[Mark]

Hi Sanya

I am not really a maths contributor but I'm gonna pipe up here. I am in
favour of having additional content in the books. So I'd always be happy
to see something about complex numbers in the books. Basically our
books should allow people to extend themselves if they are that
motivated.

We need to be very careful about where the additional content goes. Although
I think our project is a great idea, we are going to start interacting 
with the people
who wrote the syllabus, chose OBE etc. soon and I think that we are going
to cause some waves. So we should keep the syllabus content separate 
from the
additional content so that its easy to demonstrate we are syllabus 
compliant and
we have some bonus material rather than looking like text which becomes too
advanced. Also we would like to get through to weaker students and 
second language
students and so we should introduce and consolidate ideas as slowly and 
thoroughly
as possible without hinting at or digressing into more advanced topics.

In Physics I have a few more advanced chapters which are at the end and 
I'll just label them additional content.
I think its safe to refer to them earlier suggesting that students might 
read them for interest etc. but
I don't want to break up the syllabus content with additional content.

I would suggest putting complex numbers at the end, we could have 
additional sections (introductions) on the
ideas of matrices, vectors, complex numbers etc.

Of course this is all my opinion and I'd love to hear other peoples ideas.

Cheers,

Mark



Sanya Rajan wrote:

> Hi Sam,
>
> Sorry for the late reply, I didn't have access to the net for the past
> few days.
>
> I would like to be more involved in the fhsst, however at the moment I'm
> busy trying to organise a job. I would like to get settled first before
> I commit my time, since it would not be fair to you if I found out later
> that I wouldn't have enough time to be involved at a higher level.
>
> In the meantime I will continue editing the numbers chapter, adding an
> intro and more content (exercises, etc.). I noticed that in the
> quadratic equations section we mention that sometimes solutions can be
> "not real" and in the numbers section there is footnote that states
> complex numbers are not in the scope of this book. Wouldn't it be better
> to include a treatment of complex numbers in the numbers chapter, then
> we can use proper terminology in the later chapters.
>
> Sanya
>
> Sam Halliday wrote:
>
> > hi sanya,
> >
> > mark has told me you have shown some interest in joining the "admin"
> > team as you wish to be kept up to date with book publication/printing.
> > to be honest, the place for that kinda discussion is more on the
> > FHSST-Authors list. the admin team is more "people management" than
> > anything else. we co-ordinate new authors and decide who would be best
> > working on which sections.
> >
> > you seem to have shown a great deal of interest in FHSST in the last
> > week and i do not want to waste your enthusiasm!! so i have a
> > proposal... if you wish to become a more dedicated member of the FHSST
> > team, i could assign you to be maintainer of a complete chapter (file)
> > in the maths book. you would be responsible for the integration of
> > that chapter into the maths book and making sure the content is up to
> > syllabus standards. it'd also involve mundane tasks such as merging
> > peoples contributions and making sure the LaTeX formatting is in line
> > with our standards.
> >
> > i was thinking something like the trig chapter, or problem solving.
> >
> > so what do you say? :-)


--
--
Mark Horner                                                                                                         
Jabber/AIM/Yahoo:   marknewlyn                                                               

Co-author:
http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/fhsst

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