Re: Complex Made Simple: Update

On Sat, 13 Jun 2009 08:33:48 -0700 (PDT), Han de Bruijn
<umumenu@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 12 jun, 22:24, Han de Bruijn <umum...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 12 jun, 15:20, "Jesse F. Hughes" <je...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

There's a certain logic to your placement, but it's nonetheless
awkward and unusual.  Why not just re-word the sentence?  Replace
"should be" with, say, "should be as follows."

Yeah, there's a certain logic in the whole book. But somehow Dave
_cultivates_ the unusual. For example on page 37 of "Complex Made
Simple" (which is in itself an oxymoron) he deems the Fundamental
Theorem of Algebra to be a Corollary (3.7) instead of a _famous_
theorem. And he calls it "just an amusing digression" on page 38.

More awkward writing.

On page 51 of CMS it reads: Chapter 4. Logarithms, Winding Numbers and
Cauchy's Theorem.

Versions of Cauchy's Theorem already appeared in previous chapters.
Thus, as an indication of its content, the title of this chapter 4 is
at least a bit misleading, but leave that aside.

Yes, that's misleading if the reader is reading nothing but the
chapter titles.

For the n+1th time: You have to actually _read_ the book to get
anything out of it. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

Suddenly, in the middle of the same Chapter 4, on page 71, we read the
following: "Our next big topic is the Residue Theorem". So it is clear
that Ullrich has never followed a course in decent essay writing. It's
incredible that a "big topic" is not even mentioned in the title of a
chapter where it is treated.

Yeah, that's incredible. It violates the rule that _every_ major
result in a chapter must be mentioned in the title of the chapter.

Of course that will make the title of every chapter in the book
about 20 or 40 words long, but rules are rules. What planet are
you from, by the way?

CMS is full of these amateur designs. I'm
talking about form here, not about (mathematical) content. Guess it's
the price we pay for the fact that, thanks to LaTeX technology, anyone
can be the editor of a book.

Giggle. There was no LaTeX involved in writing the book.

I don't know exactly what you're trying to accomplish with
these comments on how badly written the book is. But I'm
curious: What's your explanation for the fact that everyone
but you (everyone who's expressed an opinion) says that the
writing is precisely one of the major virtues of the book?

Just curious. It's a global conspiracy, or you're the only
one who's noticed these flaws or what? Regarding the
second possibility, you should note that some of the people
expressing opinions have in fact read the book very
carefully and completely (for example the guy who posted
the rave review on amazon is the same as the guy who
found more than half the typos listed in the errata.)

Han de Bruijn

David C. Ullrich

"Understanding Godel isn't about following his formal proof.
That would make a mockery of everything Godel was up to."
(John Jones, "My talk about Godel to the post-grads."
in sci.logic.)
.

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