Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The thing I like about the Schaum's series is that they don't try to be your friend. If you're going to try to sit down to learn something intricate like geometry, you've got some serious work to do, and the sooner you get to it the better. To this end, there are no pictures in the book (other than geometric diagrams, of course), no blurbs on famous geometers or famous applications of geometry. No, this sucker's as dry as a bone.
But that's good. This is a book for motivated, adult learners. You've got your explanations, your worked examples, and then tons of exercises with answers to all of them in the back of the book - not just the odd. The thing I like about this book, now in its fourth edition (white cover), is that it takes an example-exercise approach to geometry, rather than forcing you to memorize postulates.
Even if your teacher is the most entertaining guy in the world, you're still going to have a lot of tedious work to do if you plan on mastering geometry. The way this book is laid out is an accurate reflection of that.
They say that many of these Schaum's outlines, while they might be helpful supplementary material for a course, do not go deep enough to replace the course itself. I would disagree if that charge were leveled against this one: Schaum's Geometry easily provides everything you'd get in a high school geometry course and more.
The only criticism of this book that I can muster is the following: of all the major branches of math, geometry is one you kinda need a live teacher for. For this reason, the Schaum's approach -- in parts -- is unsatisfying. The whole Schaum m.o. of humorless exercises, dry explanations, no pictures, etc. can work very well for algebra, calculus, trig, etc.
But geometry is a different beast. In particular I'm thinking of proofs. Since the Greeks, teachers have laid out postulates for their students, then given them a statement and asked them to prove it. This supernal art is really why I love geometry so much: it's like practice in thinking, and it's why I recommend it to people who want to improve the caliber of their minds even if you don't need math for anything. To quote Greg Mankiw, "Math is good training for the mind. It makes you a more rigorous thinker. . . . Your math courses are one long IQ test. [Colleges and companies] use math courses to figure out who is really smart." To which I add that math -- viewed this way -- properly begins with geometry.
Of course, Schaum's does ask you to do proofs. The problem is, it should not be the student himself who judges if the steps of his proof were fully articulated or not: for that, you need a real live human. If, alone in your garret, you write "Segment AB is congruent to CD" for one step of the proof, but then find that the answer key has it "Segment AB is congruent to CD by the definition of congruent segments," do you give yourself the point?
In other words, being an autodidact might be okay in other math areas, but the whole power of geometry hinges largely, I submit, on some unpleasant Other forcing you to articulate a proof without getting sloppy.
But I don't see how there's much that Schaum's can do about that. Still a fantastic text.
NOTE: The first two chapters of this workhorse used to be a review of basic algebra, but not anymore as of the 4th edition. This was unfortunate. Why did they delete them? Schaum's owns the material: what was the harm in letting them stay in? These chapters have been replaced by a one-page "warning" enumerating all the algebra you will probably need to negotiate this book. But here's the problem: if you don't feel comfortable with some of it, you are referred to Schaum's Outline of College Algebra. The problem with THAT is that the latter book more or less circularly assumes you're familiar with basic geometry, the point of this book! So Dr. Thomas, if you're still at the reins, please put those two chapters back if you put out a 5th edition.
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