Re: Complex Made Simple: Update

On Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:07:46 +0200, Han de Bruijn
<Han.deBruijn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

David C. Ullrich wrote:

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.

It violates the rule that you should stick to the _topic_, once you've
decided this with the header of a chapter. Some of the chapters in your
book are titled like this: "Chapter X. Mathematics", "Chapter XI. More
Mathematics". You could as well have left _out_ such chapters and have
a _continuing_ story in that "Lemma, Proposition, Theorem, Proof" style.
Sometimes have the impression that your subdivision in chapters is only
useful for the purpose of having smaller labels for the statements.

The only reason you get that impression is your lack of understanding.
Everything in Chapter 4 has to do with logarithms, winding numbers
and Cauchy's Theorem. (In fact Cauchy's Theorem, the Cauchy Integral
Formula, and the Residue Theorem are all equivalent. You see various
versions of CT -> CIF and of CIF -> CT in the book. The proof
of RT is a simple application of CT (or maybe of CIF, I forget
which one I cited), while CT and CIF are both just special cases
of RT.)

You're lucky that the subject is mathematics. This guarantees that you
simply can't reverse much of the order in which subjects are treated.
And _that_ indeed is your logic. And your 'sci.math' style of writing
indeed makes it more digestable than usual. (I didn't say the book is
bad. I only say it can be _improved_ in its form with little effort.)

But applying your "improvement" _consistently_, instead of
just in the one case where you're complaining, would _either_
require that the title of every chapter be 20 or 40 words
long _or_ that every chapter be split into 10 smaller 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?

It's the other way around. Don't be off-topic in a chapter.

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.

Most certainly a(nother) _TeX_ dialect. Who cares ..

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?

Writing and writing is two. I find that the organizing of the book could
have been done better with relatively little effort; also find that your
way of "telling a story" is _better_ than in most (this kind of) books.

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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