Customer Reviews:
 Best Little Math Reference of them all! March 6, 2007
Michelle Ciccariello
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
This is not a strictly alphabetical dictionary, which is one of the best things about it. Table of Contents for this book goes like this... NUMBER: Numbers, Sets, Arithmetic, Fractions, Decimals, Indices and Standard Form, Ratio and Proportion, Percentages. SHAPE, SPACE, and MEASURES: Geometry, Angles, Polygons, Solids, Symmetry, Transformation, Vectors, Geometric Constructions, Loci, Drawing To Scale, Perimeter and Area, Volume, Trigonometry, Circles, Calculations Involving Circlers, Angles in a Circle, Measurement, Time. And so on... Very logical groupings, making it easier to find what you are looking for, even if you've forgotten the exact term.
I bought a few different Math Dictionaries to help answer my child's burning curiosities about the "what's next?" of various math topics. What with "No Child Left Behind," the schools now spend such a long time drilling endlessly on each step that there is never time left for the fun part, the "what happens next" and the "what else you can do with this." Kids get bored out of their minds and learn to tune out. In most subjects, I have no trouble adding the "But wait! there's more!" excitement at home, but with math, I had no reference books and not enough background info on my own.
Math was my 'hate it" subject. If only I had owned a copy of this in school... everything would have been different. Every topic is explained with clear and concise diagrams, pictures and explanations. Everything is organized by topic, not strictly alphabetically, so you don't look up "denominator" in one place and "numerator" somewhere else with no cohesive overview of fractions. You get units that cover a whole topic. But the index is very thorough, so if you just want to look up the term "quadrant," you can do it quickly.
How can this book cover so much and still be so thin? There are no pages of exercises and practice problems to do! This is why it is a "Dictionary," not some other kind of a math book. This is also why it's exhilarating, not drudgery. You look up "Polygons," and you get a concise list of polygons (with a small colored picture of each one) from 3 sides (triangle) all the way up to 20 sides (Icosagon). You look up area, and you get the formula for the area of a rectangle, then you move on to square, triangle, paralellagram, trapezium, circle, and surface area of a soild, all in two pages. No drills, no boring pages of "practice." What is there to practice? Somebody tells you what it is this clearly, and now you know, and on you go. It's exciting. And it goes into more depth in less time than any of the other math references I've checked out.
I bought this book for my 8 year old, and she loves it. I've used it with middle school kids, high school kids and adults, and they all love it. What's not to love? You get the fun part of math without the boring turnoff part. And guess what I've observed? Kids look up something, then irresistibly scramble for paper to "try it out" by making up their own practice problems, purely for the fun of it. That is the ultimate "ah-ha," and it doesn't get any better than that.
When kids beg for more math, saying, "Can we play some more of that math stuff we did last time?" You know the lightbulb is on. This is a book that lets you play to your heart's content!
(And I have to admit that I totally love seeing Pascal's Triangle, tessellation, symmetry, and the Fibonacci Sequence on the cover! Those are some of my daughter's favorite things to play with, and she has taught me to love math... after all these years. Oh, this book is just a treasure!)
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