Synopses & Reviews
This is a new book by the highly successful Bennett/Briggs author team which is designed for those portions of the market that are either price sensitive or those who are looking for a more brief text than they've been using. It has all of the breadth of the original text but with less depth. The quantitative reasoning flavor of the original text, Using and Understanding Mathematics, has been retained and will continue to be a major selling feature of this text.
About the Author
Jeff Bennett's academic home is the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he has been teaching on and off since 1983 and from which he received his Ph.D. in Astrophysics in 1987. During this time, he's taught more than 50 college courses in subjects including mathematics, astronomy, physics, environmental science, and science education. He began work on Using and Understanding Mathematics because he is particularly interested in helping students overcome difficulties with mathematics. For similar reasons, he has recently completed a textbook for introductory astronomy (The Cosmic Perspective, with M. Donahue, N. Schneider, and G.M. Voit, Addison Wesley Longman, 1999). He is also working on several books about mathematics and science for the general public. In addition, he is now working on science books for children. Jeff is perhaps best known for his role in creating the Voyage Scale Model Solar System on the National Mall in Washington, DC (opening October 2001); he proposed the project and worked on the team that developed it as a collaborative effort between the Challenger Center for Space Science Education, the Smithsonian Institution, and NASA. When not working, he enjoys participating in masters swimming and hiking the trails of Boulder, Colorado, with his family.
William L. Briggs has been on the mathematics faculty at the University of Colorado at Denver for 17 years. He teaches throughout the undergraduate and graduate curriculum with a special interest in teaching mathematical modeling as it applies to problems in biology and medicine. He developed the quantitative reasoning course for liberal arts students at CU-Denver supported by the textbook Using and Understanding Mathematics, which he co-authored with Jeff Bennett. He has written two other tutorial monographs, The Multigrid Tutorial and The DFT: An Owner's Manual for the Discrete Fourier Transform. He is a University of Colorado President's Teaching Scholar, an Outstanding Teacher awardee of the Rocky Mountain Section of the MAA, and the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Ireland. Bill lives with his wife, Julie, his daughter, Katie, and two dogs, Midnight and Seamus, in Boulder, Colorado. He loves to bake bread, as well as run trails and rock climb in the mountains near his home.
Table of Contents
1. Thinking Critically. Recognizing Fallacies.
Propositions and Truth Values.
Sets and Venn Diagrams.
Critical Thinking in Everyday Life.
2. Approaches to Problem Solving.
The Problem Solving Power of Units.
Standardization Units: More Problem Solving Power.
Problem Solving Guidelines and Hints.
3. Numbers in the Real World.
Uses and Abuses of Percentages.
Putting Numbers in Perspective.
Dealing with Uncertainty.
How Numbers Deceive: Polygraphs, Mammograms, and More.
4. Financial Management.
The Power of Compounding.
Savings Plans.
Loan Payments, Credit Cards, and Mortgages.
5. Statistical Reasoning.
Fundamentals of Statistics.
Should You Believe a Statistical Study?
Statistical Tables and Graphs.
Graphics in the Media.
Correlation and Causality.
Characterizing a Data Distribution.
6. Probability: Living with the Odds.
Fundamentals of Probability.
Combining Probabilities.
The Law of Large Numbers.
Counting and Probability.
7. Exponential Astonishment.
Growth: Linear vs. Exponential.
Doubling Time and Half-Life.
Exponential Modeling.
8. Mathematics and the Arts.
Mathematics and Music.
Perspective and Symmetry.
Proportions and the Golden Ratio.
9. Mathematics and Politics.
Voting: Does the Majority Always Rule?
Apportionment: The House of Representatives and Beyond.