Saturday, June 20, 2009

Geometry & Trigonometry Books

The DH has had some requests recently from DS to explore trig in more detail. Up to now, dad and son have been playing with triangles and the ratios/figuring out of tangents, sines, cosines of various angles. But to provide more consistent help, he needed some books which up to now we haven't started collecting.

As usual, I was very fortunate to receive wonderful suggestions from the various groups, such as Living Math, and the superb regional homeschooling lists I belong to. Here are some of the titles that the great folk here have recommended. Having lists like these on this blog are of great use to me because I know I won't be lost when DS displays one of his sudden "I want more math to play with" moods. I hope they are of use to you too.

As a note, most of these books are of the livelier sort...not your dry mathy textbook because there's no way DS would even look at one if he could help it.

Murderous Maths titles:

Vicious Circles and Savage Shapes
The Fiendish Angletron

Instructional guides and living books:

Mathematics Made Simple: Sixth Edition by Thomas Cusick -- more of a "what to discover next" sort of guide than an engaging reader or activity book.
Geometry (Teach Yourself) by Paul Abbott
Teach Yourself Trigonometry by P. Abbott and Hugh Neill
Who Is Fourier?: A Mathematical Adventure by Transnational College of LEX
Flatland (Illustrated Edition) by Edwin A. Abbot
The Annotated Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Ian Stewart
Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So by Ian Stewart
Sphereland: A Fantasy About Curved Spaces and an Expanding Universe by Dionys Burger, Isaac Asimov, and Cornelie J. Rheinboldt
Snowflake Bentley (Caldecott Medal Book) by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and Mary Azarian
Howard Eves' Mathematical Circles books
A History of Pi by Petr Beckmann
Trigonometry (Math Success) by Rebecca Wingard-Nelson
Trigonometry by I.M. Gelfand and Mark Saul (also, check out the Algebra title by Gelfand)
Trigonometry, The Easy Way by Douglas Downing (also, check out Algebra, The Easy Way) -- a fantasy story-based trigonometry



Curriculum/ videos/ more help:

Geometer's Sketchpad or from Key Curriculum Press here. And activities for young learners.
AIMS Geometry books
GEMS Build It! Festival
Teaching Company's High School Geometry
Teaching Textbooks
Thinkwell (professors on video)
Life of Fred
The excellent Geometry (K-7) Booklists at Subadra's Library of Books, Links & More blog.
Norman Shapiro's Geometry Through Art

My very grateful thanks to all who suggested titles/ tools.

2 comments:

  1. Your site popped up when I did a search about getting children “unplugged” while doing some publicity for my newest children’s book with Farrar Straus & Giroux (yes, authors have to do their own publicity these days, and it’s all online).

    Because of your interest in getting kids unplugged, I thought you might like to take a look at “Too Much Flapdoodle” (http://us.macmillan.com/toomuchflapdodle). It’s a chapter book, aimed at 7-12 year-olds, about a boy who is completely “plugged in” until he has to go spend the summer on the farm of his eccentric Great Aunt and Great Uncle. If you’d like more information, or possibly a review copy, just let me know.

    I’d love it if you could consider it for recommendation, if you have a way to do it on your web site.

    Sincerely

    Amy MacDonald
    10 Winslow Rd., Falmouth, ME 0410
    www.AmyMacDonald.com

    “Too Much Flapdoodle” is a “read aloud treat” (Kirkus). In stores now.

    Aunt MAttie and Uncle Philbert now have a web site
    of their own! http://www.mattieandphilbert.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for dropping by Amy. I've replied to your email address. All the best!

    ReplyDelete

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