Math Workbooks

These are more specifically geared towards subject-specific work and comprehension. My general philosophy is to present math in an unintimidating way. Most math concepts aren’t hard, so what is? I believe that it’s the presentation of giant walls of black-and-white text, written in a strange language consisting of inscrutable figures (semantics) and indecipherable operations (syntax). It’s like being handed a copy of Wittgenstein written in Mandarin Chinese. No wonder we just give up immediately. It feels impossible, beyond us, boring, and meaningless. Why make it so dry and scary? The ideas aren’t that hard to grasp, especially with a little visual intuition, and the language can be easily broken down into plain English. For example, I can tell give you: 

1524-53x23dx = -x53 |24 15 = -108.45501…

Or: I could say “The definite integral from fifteen to twenty-four of the function d x where the function f-of-x-equals negative five times the cubic root of three…evaluated…*Snoring, crying, etc.*

Or: I could say “That function before the “dx” makes a curve. To find the area under that curve between where x equals 15 and x equals 24, just plug -24 to the 5/3 power into your calculator, then do it with 15, and subtract. 

Better still: I could break it out into color-coded components, link them to the integral, show you the function graphed, highlight the area we’re calculating, and show you how little boxes fit into that region to add up to a number awfully darn close to 108 below the x-axis….

​

Anyway, the following resources opt for options 3 and 4, then give you some clear examples to
practice, and generally make math seem doable and comprehensible and friendly.)