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Painless Geometry
Titles in Barron's Painless Series are textbook supplements designed especially for classroom use by middle school and high school students. The approach of each title is an appeal to students who think that the subject is boring, or too difficult, or both. The authors, all experienced educators, take a light approach, showing kids what is most interesting about each subject, and how seemingly difficult problems can be transformed into fun quizzes, brain-ticklers, and challenging puzzles with rational solutions. Geometry becomes painless--and even fun--once students learn the subject's basic components and see how solving any geometric problem is fitting parts together to solve an intriguing puzzle. They learn the meaning of postulates and theorems, discover angles of all kinds, find the relationships that exist between parallel and perpendicular lines, and discover the characteristics of shapes such as triangles, quadrilaterals, and circles. The author introduces real-world geometry experiments to make concepts less abstract, offers study strategies, and demonstrates how mini-proofs are the first step toward understanding formal geometry proofs.
- GenresMathematicsNonfiction
320 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2001
32 people are currently reading
95 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 28, 2024
This was just a simple overview of all the basic geometry principles that I have been familiar with for a long time. I'm 65 years old, so I learned all of these things about 50 years ago. Nevertheless, it was good for me to review them as part of my ongoing efforts to keep my mind sharp into old age.
The book was well organized, and the information and explanations were described well enough that even very young people should be able to learn quickly and easily -- or, as the title says, "painless"ly.
The book was well organized, and the information and explanations were described well enough that even very young people should be able to learn quickly and easily -- or, as the title says, "painless"ly.
July 13, 2010
The book was written for middle schoolers, and I think it was, therefore, perfectly done! If I had read this as a middle schooler, I would have been a lot more familiar with terms and would not have been so scared of geometry when I took the class.
If you struggle with gemoetry, start by using this book until you get the terms and properties down. Use the notecard study guide the book suggests! It really will help. Then, try another book that introduces harder concepts and proofs. Also, get problems that you can work out to make sure you know what you are doing.
I also recommend this book if you are the kind of learner that you remember the first time you see something. It is a quick read without much problems. If you need to learn by doing problems over and over, this book is not for you although you can use it as a reference book.
Although it does not cover the more complicated geometry problems, it helped me refresh my memory on basic definitions and applications. However, I was looking for a book that challenged me with proofs, and this book had only proofs as examples and never let you try it. Nonetheless, I am glad I went through it just because there were some terms I was foggy on or did not know!
If you struggle with gemoetry, start by using this book until you get the terms and properties down. Use the notecard study guide the book suggests! It really will help. Then, try another book that introduces harder concepts and proofs. Also, get problems that you can work out to make sure you know what you are doing.
I also recommend this book if you are the kind of learner that you remember the first time you see something. It is a quick read without much problems. If you need to learn by doing problems over and over, this book is not for you although you can use it as a reference book.
Although it does not cover the more complicated geometry problems, it helped me refresh my memory on basic definitions and applications. However, I was looking for a book that challenged me with proofs, and this book had only proofs as examples and never let you try it. Nonetheless, I am glad I went through it just because there were some terms I was foggy on or did not know!
May 5, 2009
An awesomly amazing resource for reviewing geometry or as a supplament for teaching geometry to a home schooler! I actually read it like a novel--crazy huh!
August 4, 2020
I have to admit that this book disappointed me a little bit. It is not that the book is bad. It is indeed a modestly enjoyable book that I would have liked a lot more had I read it during late elementary or middle school when I was engaged in that stage of my personal math development. It is a book I could also recommend to those in the same age range who want some assistance in better understanding geometry from a conventional standpoint of formal learning in plane geometry. I was disappointed not by its contents but by the fact that I was expecting at least some treatment of spherical geometry and its quirks, and this book did not manage that task at all. I am not sure that any study of geometry could be viewed by those who are terrified of the subject matter as painless, but if you want a suitably silly look at plane geometry that will give some help in understanding what a high school level understanding of the subject matter would require, this book certainly does fine. But sometimes one simply wants more and that is too advanced of a subject for this book to cover, I suppose.
This book is between 350 and 400 pages long, although it reads fast because the pages are small and there are a lot of pictures, and it contains eleven chapters. The book begins with a short introduction and after that discusses some terms (1). After that the author discusses angels (2) and then parallel and perpendicular lines (3). There is a chapter on triangles (4) and then a chapter on congruent and similar triangles (5). This leads to a discussion of quadrilaterals (6) and polygons (7), as well as circles (8). Unsurprisingly, having discussed these two-dimensional shapes the author then covers perimeter, area, and volume (9), after which there is a lot of helpful discussion of graphing using various methods (10). The last chapter discusses constructs (11), after which there are appendices that include a glossary (i) as well as key formulas (ii), followed by an index. As a whole, the chapters themselves include quite a few exercises for the reader to work out and plenty of problems as well to sort out the understanding the reader has of the subject, with the answers included at the end of each chapter so as to help the reader to understand one subject before moving on to the next one.
It is worthwhile to celebrate some of the ways this book seeks to be painless and how it seeks to further the understanding of a subject that is somewhat dry and formal for many students. The book encourages experiments as a practical means of understanding geometry so that one can actually understand the relevance of the area of study instead of simply memorizing equations without understanding, as is frequently the case in many classes of the subject. Similarly, the book uses a lot of illustrations so as to help the reader understand the book's subject material. All of this makes the book certainly a lot more fun than the usual geometry book, and a far more entertaining entree into the subject subject than most geometry textbooks would be. It is up to the reader, of course, to determine whether one wants an enjoyable if somewhat basic book on the subject or one is looking for more advanced offerings. Still, if you want a book for a young geometry student who needs to visualize something in order to better understand the material, this book is certainly a worthwhile one that I can recommend from my own reading of it.
This book is between 350 and 400 pages long, although it reads fast because the pages are small and there are a lot of pictures, and it contains eleven chapters. The book begins with a short introduction and after that discusses some terms (1). After that the author discusses angels (2) and then parallel and perpendicular lines (3). There is a chapter on triangles (4) and then a chapter on congruent and similar triangles (5). This leads to a discussion of quadrilaterals (6) and polygons (7), as well as circles (8). Unsurprisingly, having discussed these two-dimensional shapes the author then covers perimeter, area, and volume (9), after which there is a lot of helpful discussion of graphing using various methods (10). The last chapter discusses constructs (11), after which there are appendices that include a glossary (i) as well as key formulas (ii), followed by an index. As a whole, the chapters themselves include quite a few exercises for the reader to work out and plenty of problems as well to sort out the understanding the reader has of the subject, with the answers included at the end of each chapter so as to help the reader to understand one subject before moving on to the next one.
It is worthwhile to celebrate some of the ways this book seeks to be painless and how it seeks to further the understanding of a subject that is somewhat dry and formal for many students. The book encourages experiments as a practical means of understanding geometry so that one can actually understand the relevance of the area of study instead of simply memorizing equations without understanding, as is frequently the case in many classes of the subject. Similarly, the book uses a lot of illustrations so as to help the reader understand the book's subject material. All of this makes the book certainly a lot more fun than the usual geometry book, and a far more entertaining entree into the subject subject than most geometry textbooks would be. It is up to the reader, of course, to determine whether one wants an enjoyable if somewhat basic book on the subject or one is looking for more advanced offerings. Still, if you want a book for a young geometry student who needs to visualize something in order to better understand the material, this book is certainly a worthwhile one that I can recommend from my own reading of it.
June 8, 2023
Covers all the topics and is a good step-by-step help to learn geometry. Lacks the colorfulness of Everything You Need to Ace Geometry in One Big Fat Notebook by Christy Needham or the illustrations of E-Z Geometry (Barron's Easy Way) by Lawrence S. Leff, but is a good up-to-date guidebook for geometry.
March 19, 2019
This book is great on explaining geometry concepts. However, learning formulas can be confusing. For instance, page 207 states a circle circumference's formula is pie multiplied by the diameter. Then the bottom of the page says the formula is 2 multiplied by pie multiplied by the radius.
January 24, 2023
AWESOME!
I cannot recommend the painless series of books more! It has been a fabulous supplement to really help my students understand geometry, algebra, vocabulary and so much more!
I cannot recommend the painless series of books more! It has been a fabulous supplement to really help my students understand geometry, algebra, vocabulary and so much more!
500-599-natural-science
November 15, 2019516
August 29, 2021
What a great review of geometry before i go to my class!!
November 9, 2015
Fun way to review Geometry!!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews