Elementary Geometry For College Students by Houghton Mifflin Company

	Title: Elementary Geometry For College Students Purchase Item Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin Company Our Price: $54.00
Customer Reviews:
Elementary Geometry For College Students by Houghton Mifflin Company Obscure and VagueThis Book Does It All
The instructions in this book are vague at best. The authors appear to be rushing the student through the fundamentals of Geometry without ever explaining how things work. The homework sections are a JOKE! The authors have given "solutions" to selct problems in the book, but do not explain how those answers are achieved. The book gives basics and ideas in the text then provides exercises with answers to some of the exercises. It would be much more helpful if they chose some of the problems to show a solution. Telling the student that the angle is 35 degrees does absolutely no good if the book does not tell the student WHY it is 35 degrees. If you have a great teacher who is willing to spend some time explaining in detail and going over the exercises in detail you may be o.k. with this book. If your teacher does not do these things then this book will hurt you more than it helps. If I could give it no stars I would have.
Elementary Geometry For College Students by Houghton Mifflin Company Worst Text Book EVER
Who am I to say this? I'm a 35-year-old college student with a 3.5 GPA, studying for a B.A. in English and Graphic Design in the Chicagoland area. I'm not that great in math but I with studying, good teachers and decent text books, I've passed all my math classes so far with As and Bs. I'm not the smartest person in the world but I am no dummy. Elementary Plane Geometry was required but I thought it might be interesting and maybe fun as I had NEVER taken a Geometry class before. This book was completely useless. In fact, I ONLY used it to do the problems assigned to me by the teacher. I did not use this book to study nor as a reference guide. I used it as a coaster and a door stop a few times. My fellow students HATED it as well. There were NO examples of how to do the homework assignments. This book did not give you steps on how to solve problems. This book did not explain why an answer was what it was. Opening up this book, to me, was like telling a 5-year old to go build a rocket and speak Chinese. Instead of using this book, I barely passed the class by going every week to the tutors at school's study center (who, by the way, did not understand the "instructions" in this book either and had to read the chapters all the way through so they could teach me how the authors did the problems), my husband who is a mechanical engineer (who also hated this book and thought it was the worst math book he's ever seen) struggled through the text book with me, and* I checked Geometry for Dummies out of the local library which helped a little. If you are a school administration looking into using this book, I beg you to please not. If you are a student that has been assigned this book, you should start lining up additional help now.
Elementary Geometry For College Students by Houghton Mifflin Company A Wretched and Horrid Book
Entering geometry for the first time ever can be an almost initimidating venture, especially for the first time geometry student. After conquering other mathematical courses successfully (like algebra and statistics), I presumed entering "Elementary Geometry for College Students," based on being given exceptional required texts from previous courses, would be a breeze. Oh how wrong I was! "Elementary Geometry for College Students," by Daniel C. Alexander (of Parkland College) and Geralyn M. Koeberlein (of Mahomet-Seymour High School), has taught me nothing more than NOT to trust a textbook written by a couple of hack authors from unknown schools with a blatant disregard for meticulously explaining important vital and "elementary" steps as to how to arrive to certain statements, reasoning, deducing, measurements, and so much more NEEDED in successfully acheving full reign over geometry. For example, the origins of postulates and proofing are never explored, but slammed in your face, convoluting both topics along with breaking down statements from deducing a particular shape, its angles and measurements. The book's attempts at explaining triangles, convex polygons, congruent triangles, and properties of parallelograms are all but slandered together (with steps in basic algebraic mathematical equations arrogantly skipped over and presumed upon to you) without any form of thorough reason or explained steps bothered in explaining. Important theorems are disarrayed throughout with quick-step problem examples without helpful or detailed reasoning as to how the answer was ever achieved. The authors have obviously assumed a college student has had some form of pre-geometry course prepping, and expect both instructor and student to know the advanced fundamentals without considering the beginner geometry student at all (just from judging by example and "solutions" given in each section). As a result, students will fail miserably, along with angering frustration, and discontent wonderment over what purpose geometry may ever serve toward a real-life career. Perhaps trying "Geometry for Dummies" by the infamous IDG publishing company would be a much suitable levelage to this otherwise detrimental book attempting to teach an important equation to the universe of mathematics. By far, this textbook is the worst and most horrible book in teaching the subject of geometry!! To professors searching a geometry book for your students: PLEASE avoid this book at all costs! You and your students don't need a textbook that presumes you know it all before diving into shapes, proofing, deducing, theorums, solids, and so forth. Most surely, there are much more superior books to this wretched and horrid title worthy of its decommissioning.
Elementary Geometry For College Students by Houghton Mifflin Company Product Description
Building on the success of its first three editions, the Fourth Edition of this market-leading text covers the important principles and real-world applications of plane geometry, with additional chapters on solid geometry, analytic geometry, and an introduction to trigonometry. Strongly influenced by both NCTM and AMATYC standards, the text takes an inductive approach that includes integrated activities and tools to promote hands-on application and discovery. New! Tables provide visual connections between figures and concepts and help students better assess their level of mastery and test readiness. New! Chapter Tests have been added to the end of every chapter. New! Proofs have been varied to include written and visual proofs, as well as comparisons, to support students with different learning styles. New! Exercise sets in the Student Study Guide, with cross-references to the text, offer additional practice and review. New! Technology-related margin features encourage the use of the Geometer's Sketchpad, graphing calculators, and further explorations. New! Coverage now includes Section 2.6, Symmetry and Transformations. New! Technology Package includes the HM ClassPrep CD with computerized test bank (powered by Diploma). Updated! The number of Exercises and Explorations has been increased. Highly visual approach begins with the presentation of an idea, followed by the examination and development of a theory, verification of the theory through deduction, and finally, application of the principles to the real world. Discovery features reinforce the text's inductive approach: activities integrated throughout enable students to discover geometry concepts on their own, and section tools provide with hands-on application of geometric concepts Applications reinforce the connection of geometry to the real world: high-interest Chapter Openers introduce the principal notion of the chapter and relate to the real world and A Perspective On... sections conclude each chapter, providing sketches that are interesting, sometimes historical, and always informative. Summaries of constructions, postulates, and theorems are provided, and an easy-to-navigate numbering system for postulates and theorems provides a user-friendly structure. In response to user feedback, paragraph proofs feature more prominently in this edition. Comprehensive appendices include Algebra Review and An Introduction to Logic. A glossary of terms, a summary of applications in the text, and selected answers are also provided in the back of the text.