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Resourceaholic: Digitising Outdated Textbook Workouts


I’ve a fairly extension assortment of outdated maths books. They’re very low-cost to choose up in second hand bookstores, and the one factor stopping me from shopping for them on a regular basis is the dearth of area in my home!

I used to be shopping by means of ‘A New Course in Algebra’ this morning. It’s from 1959, so not notably outdated in comparison with another textbooks in my assortment. It’s filled with lengthy algebra workout routines with tonnes of problem. I’m not suggesting we use these workout routines of their entirety (I could also be quaint, however even I draw the road at giving my college students fifty units of double brackets to broaden!). However they do present some good concepts, notably for extension questions.

I’ve blogged in regards to the treasures I’ve present in outdated textbooks many instances earlier than (for instance in my submit about Elementary Algebra for Faculties), and as soon as I even had a group of lecturers sort up a few of the workout routines. I even have web page on my weblog the place lecturers can entry on-line variations of outdated textbooks, going again to the 1500s. 
Right this moment I assumed I’d attempt one thing completely different. I took some footage of workout routines and tried changing them to PDFs utilizing mathpix.com.

I did not actually know what to anticipate, however the high quality of the output blew my thoughts! 

I randomly took some pictures of pages from the textbook on my telephone. I uploaded them to Mathpix and it immediately transformed them to very prime quality digital variations. I am shocked that it was in a position to learn the images so effectively! Under are my preliminary makes an attempt (word that I used to be randomly taking pictures of varied pages within the ebook, therefore these aren’t full workout routines).

This is the primary picture I took:

And here is what Mathpix gave me. It’s spot on.


I attempted one thing which I assumed could be tougher to learn (the indices within the textbook are a bit blurry):

Nevertheless it had no bother with this in any respect (that is an extract from this train – I’ve rearranged it in Phrase. I like these questions…)


I puzzled if it may address surds and the reply is sure. 

This train on increasing double brackets got here out clearly too. 

Evaluate this train with equal workout routines in trendy textbooks. A lot thought has gone into it. I believe that many modern-day Key Stage 3 ‘high set’ lessons simply practise the fundamentals of increasing double brackets after which transfer on, as a substitute of being given the chance to essentially strengthen their algebraic fluency by trying questions like these.

And one ultimate instance – fixing quadratic equations. 

Once more, MathPix transformed it completely. Once more, there are some nice questions on this train.

Simply as I obtained very enthusiastic about all this, I realised that Mathspix limits me to solely ten free snips, and I used all of them in a short time…

Nevertheless it’s so attention-grabbing to see that there is large potential right here to make very useable variations of some these outdated workout routines. And sure – the solutions are behind the ebook! So that they could possibly be transformed too.

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