For the text review assignment I choose “Mathematicsin Life, Society & the World,” by Parks, Musser, Burton and Siebler.The title of the book caught my attention because it addresses math in real lifesituations and I tend to understand mathematical concepts better if they areused in real life situations.

Before selecting a reference book from the list, I already hada few topics in mind that I planned to research. I will address them further onin this paper. Before I discuss those topics, let me say that I thought mostmath books were pretty much the same and I found out differently.

The table of contents seemed to be the best place to startbecause it gives an overview of the book at a glance. While doing a side byside comparison with our book and Parks and Musser, I noticed that these twobooks are not quite the same. The chapter topics and the subject matter vary quitea lot. Both books begin with problem solving techniques but by the secondchapter Parks and Musser leave out one of my favorite subjects which isinfinity. While I was flipping through Parks and Musser’s book lookingfor any sign of infinity, I happened to notice that the layout, content, andpresentation of material resemble that of my other math book, “For AllPractical Purposes.”  However,I prefer the layout and content of “For All Practical Purposes” muchbetter. I thought surely Infinity and Aleph Null must be in Parks and Musserbook somewhere. Nope! No where to be found. Well, if that isn’t a goodenough reason to put the book back on the shelf, I don’t know what elseis!

The topics that I had in mind to research were some wonderfultables that I found to be quite useful in our book. I wanted to see if the newbook had these great tables as well. The first is Pascal’s Triangle. WhenI was having difficulties solving the last few probability problems in chapter11, I turned to Pascal’s Triangle. After learning how to use the table,solving the last three problems became so easy. Not only does our book have a detailedsection on Pascal’s Triangle and the Binomial Theorem, it is also laidout in an easier to understand format. Parks and Musser have a very smallsection in chapter one which talks about pattern strategies and problem solving.The new book shows a smaller version of Pascal’s Triangle to demonstrateinductive reasoning but gives no instructions on how the triangle can be usedas an effective tool for solving probability problems.

I can’t begin to express how much I appreciate helpfultables and tools that are conveniently disbursed throughout our text book. Theycan save time and frustration. This leads me to comment on yet other amazingtable that is in chapter twelve of our book. The topic is Statistics, table 10,The Normal Distribution, Areas under the Standard Normal Curve.

Unfortunately, this particular table was not in Parks andMusser’s book. After realizing the table wasn’t in the book, Idecided to explore the section anyway and see what the book did cover in theway of Common Measures of Central Tendency and Normal Distribution. I washoping to gather more information on this topic because I was again strugglingwith other homework problems at the end of chapter twelve and thought perhaps, Imight get a little extra help by researching the same topic in Parks and Musserbook.

In this section Parks and Musser describe computing thestandard normal distribution and show several methods that can be used to findthe area that lies between any two vertical lines. They also write about thedifferent deviations and show how percentages are distributed under the z-axis,called data axis. Again I found the material in this book a bit watered down.Unfortunately, I was not able to get the information I was seeking. I gave upand continued looking for the information I need in our text book.

It seems to me that our text book teaches a higher level ofmath or simply goes into more detail with each topic. For instance, in theMeasures of Central Tendency section, Miller and Heeren define the mean, medianand mode in great detail using loads of examples. There are graphs and tables whichare used to demonstrate various applications stemming from grade pointaverages, baseball statistics to analyzing data. I count on the examples tonudge my knowledge base to the next level of understanding when I am strugglingwith a concept.

Parks and Musser take a different approach in presentingmean median and percentiles, yet mode is not mentioned at all, which I thoughtwas strange. Interestingly enough, when I was going through chapter three inDescriptive Statistics – Data and Patterns, Parks and Musser go intogreat detail explaining Quartiles and Box and Whisker Plots. Quartiles aredescribed to be the median of the lower half of points. The other topicdiscusses Box and Whisker Plots which are used so that numbers may be graphedto give an easy to view picture of the data. This technique is used to show twodata’s in comparison. This section is present in a very interesting anddetailed manner. Personally I found Parks and Musser had done a much better jobpresenting the information than Miller and Heeren.

There was one more thing that Parks and Musser does notcover and that is calculus. Since our class is about to cover calculus, Ithought it would be good to check out what is taught on this topic butunfortunately calculus is no where to be found.

It is not my intention to diminish the value of Parks andMusser’s book or the authors but to merely point out the differencesbetween styles. All books and teaching tools serve a purpose which is to teachand indeed they do just that. Each book possesses its own style and has aparticular agenda that the authors convey. I appreciate that most text bookscontinue to evolve as researchers find better ways to communicate and presentmaterials to better suit a broader range of students.

For the group of students who truly get math, there mightnot be a need for all the bells and whistles that come with our text book. But,for those students who struggle with math, Miller and Heeren present anexcellent mixture of materials. The goal is to teach and our text book combinesmathematical elements that are applied for many practical purposes.