I am very pleased to announce that I
will be joining the team of authors for the AP Calculus text Calculus: Graphical, Numerical, Algebraic
by Finney, Demana, Waits, and Kennedy (commonly known as FDWK). Ross Finney has
not been an active member of the team for some years (he died in 2000), and
Frank Demana and Bert Waits are easing out of their roles, but their names
reflect the incredible pedigree of this text. It began with George Thomas in
1951 and has variously been known as Thomas; Thomas & Finney; Finney &
Thomas; Finney, Thomas, Demana, Waits; and Finney, Demana, Waits, Kennedy.
I was fortunate to be able to get to
know George Thomas after he retired from MIT and moved to State College, Pennsylvania. I
knew him as an extremely modest and gentle person with a continuing fascination
with mathematics. I have long admired Frank Demana and Bert Waits for their
pioneering work in the Calculus Reform efforts. Dan Kennedy and I have known
each other for many years through the AP Program, and it is a particular
delight for me now to be collaborating with him.
I also am very happy to be joining an
effort aimed at high school calculus. Roughly one million U.S. students begin the
study of calculus each year, and close to 700,000 of them, at least two-thirds
of the total, start this journey in high school. This is the place where one
can have the greatest impact in shaping students’ understanding of calculus.
There are limitations that I, as an
author of “niche textbooks” for which I can take whatever approach I wish, find
constraining. First of all, the text has to be closely tied to the AP Calculus
syllabus and exams, which, in their turn, are closely tied to the curricula as
enacted at the major universities, the big consumers of AP Calculus results.
The emphasis on limits is one of those limitations. I would love to ignore them
until we get to infinite series, but that really is not an option.
Second, the books I write for my own
pleasure can assume whatever level of sophistication on the part of the reader
I choose to impose. I recognize that this text will be used by teachers and
students for whom digressions and elaborations may be more confusing than
helpful. That said, I do hope to push both teachers and students a little and
to open more perspectives, especially historical perspectives, on this subject.
Third, I am now working for the
behemoth that is Pearson. I’ve worked with Pearson people on several projects
and have always found them to be intelligent, conscientious, and seriously
concerned with producing quality products. Nevertheless, this is a mass-market
endeavor that travels with its own peculiar baggage of demands and constraints.
I am pleased that in the face of so much pressure to bulk up with every tidbit
relevant to Calculus, FDWK has managed to maintain a lean profile of only 717
pages (16 fewer than the first edition of Thomas).
Also on the plus side is the large and
talented staff that will be working with us to produce the next edition of this
text. As I observed in my contribution to “Musing on MOOCS,” which appeared in the Notices of the AMS this past January,
the real revolution in education created by the online world is not the
disappearance of the live instructor but the richness of supporting resources
that instructors can now draw upon. Robert Ghrist argued that the ease with
which individuals can produce their own online materials will eliminate the
need for big publishers. I argued that the situation is exactly the opposite:
“The problem is that few of us will have the time to develop our own materials,
and anyone who searches for such resources online is quickly inundated with
options. In an era of overwhelming choices, it is the reputable bundlers who
will dominate.” MAA is one reputable supplier, as evidenced by WeBWorK (see my
column from April, 2009).
Pearson is well aware of this need and is actively building these supports.
By an opportune coincidence, I also am working
with Karen Marrongelle and Karen Graham on the calculus chapter for the next
version of the NCTM Handbook of
Research on Learning and Teaching Mathematics. This means that I am currently steeped in the
accumulated research on how students understand and misunderstand the key concepts
of calculus. I expect to translate some of this knowledge into the shaping of
future editions of FDWK, and I also hope to share some of what I’m learning in
future Launchings columns.
