To
provide extra help for readers (especially those studying this textbook outside
of the context of a formal course), I am providing a special online student help
manual. The goal of this manual is to provide readers (in any setting) some
extra feedback on exercises and problems that will help keep them on track and
reassure them that they are doing things correctly, without providing so
much information that students taking a university course for credit could use
this manual to cheat and thereby short-cut the learning process. This is a bit
of a balancing act, so you will not find in this manual complete
solutions to any exercises or homework problems. Rather, you will find many hints
and/or short (and often partial) answers to most of the
problems in the book, a few complete solutions to problems not in the
book, and other guidance that should give all readers useful feedback
and direction without enabling short cuts around the hard personal work that is
an essential part of the learning process. I have deliberately put this
information online (as opposed to in the textbook) partly to encourage all
readers to make an honest effort before resorting to the manual.
I hope and intend that professors using the textbook in formal classes
will find that this manual provides useful (not harmful) feedback to their
students. In almost all of the exercises and problems, short answers are not
even remotely equivalent to the comprehensive solutions called for (and I don’t
provide answers in the handful of cases where a short answer essentially is the
solution).
Also, please note that almost all of the exercises and many of the
homework problems in the textbook already provide answers that will give you at
least some feedback: this manual only supplements the information already
provided in the book. Getting the right answer using incorrect methods is
generally more difficult with this material than it would be in an introductory
course, so if you arrive at the right result, chances are pretty good that you
are doing things correctly. At the same time, I strongly recommend that you
refer to this manual only after you have tried to work out the problem on your
own.
If you are studying the book on your own and really get stuck on a
problem even with the manual’s help, I invite you to send me a question at my
email address, below. This will help me
update the hints to better address the difficulties that readers actually have.
Thomas
Moore
tmoore - at - Pomona.edu