A Programmer's Introduction to Mathematics
From the bit I&#x27;ve read from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pimbook.org&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;pim_first_pages.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pimbook.org&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;pim_first_pages.pdf</a> it seems to be very very poor.<p>* 19 pages of droning before you start with something concrete. Much talk talk talk about your experiences before you get to the point. I can&#x27;t put into words how much it frustrates me when I&#x27;m expecting to read something interesting and the author takes 3 paragraphs talking about nothing (usually with lots of overexcited exclamation marks).<p>[sorry if I am being blunt, but it&#x27;s how I feel]<p>* Imprecise definitions. This defeats the purpose of learning mathematics. Like Leslie Lamport says, rigour in mathematics is not a hurdle or a chore one must endure, it&#x27;s the whole point of learning the damn thing. You give imprecise definitions, and then <i>obscure it even further with neverending paragraphs of confusing explanations</i>. This to me kills the whole pedagogical value the book might have. Here is a rule of thumb that in my experience applies well to almost everything in mathematics: the simpler your explanation is, the better. Your goal is to explain a concept as succintly and beautifully as possible. This exposes the <i>idea</i> behind it. A long and meandering explanation only serves to obscure the idea behind. Less is more.<p>* Attempting to shoe-horn programming &quot;lingo&quot; into mathematics. Sometimes, the best way to explain something, even to programmers themselves, is not to force an awkward analogy with Java programming. EDIT: 5 pages later: &quot;The best way to think about this is like testing software.&quot; oh boy...<p>* The graph in e.g. page 8 (20 of the pdf) is terribly typeset. The axes text is way too small to read and in a font that doesn&#x27;t match the rest of the content.