UW Math Professor's Take on Controversial Math Book

For those in search of information on why so many people think that then Key Curriculum math books recently adopted by the Seattle School District are so bad, Where's the Math?, a local group promoting better math education in our schools, has info on a review of the books by UW math prof John Lee (PDF of the full review here). Prof. Lee explains upfront that "a course that does not imbue students with the spirit, techniques, and practice of deductive reasoning is not a mathematics course worthy of the name." He goes on to explain exactly how well he thinks these books do that, well worth the read for people interested.

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By Jeremy in News on May 7, 2009 3:00 PM

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For the pdf-o-phobes, here's an excerpt:

Key Curriculum Press: Discovering Algebra and Discovering Advanced Algebra
My first impression is that these books have far too much verbiage for students to read, and too little in the way of clearly stated mathematical principles. Definitions, computational algorithms, and formulas seem to be stated vaguely when they are stated at all. For example a relation is defined as "any relationship between two variables.” Besides the fact that this is a circular definition, it is maddeningly vague – how is a student supposed to distinguish something that is a relation from something that is not?