Math HL Textbook Recommendations?

[SailinWind]

Hey guys! I was looking around for textbooks for HL Math and I was wondering which one of the four I should buy?

 

1. Pearson

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pearson-Baccalaureate-Mathematics-Diploma-International/dp/0435074962/ref=dp_ob_title_bk/275-7064412-8084468

 

2. IBID http://www.ibid.com.au/item/9781921917097_mathematics

 

3. This textbook by Peter Smythe http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-HL-SL-Options/dp/1490915710

 

4. Oxford http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematics-Higher-Level-International-Baccalaureate/dp/0199129347

 

 

                                                                   Any input will be appreciated! Thanks! 

Edited July 6, 2014 by SailinWind

[peterwilliam]

Go with oxford it is the good one.

[fufufuufufufufuuu]

I honestly recommend to study all textbooks. LOL

 

but i prefer cambridge and IBID. It's easy to understand, and complete. but IBID doesnt follow the current syllabus, but still useful as long as you know the current syllabus.

Didnt really like Pearson to be honest

 

and oh the book by peter is quite good, as my teacher said. but i didnt get the chance to study it, cause i didnt buy the book

Edited July 10, 2014 by fufufuufufufufuuu

[maroctam]

I say pearson, but I'm only familiar with and older version of IBID and the current pearson out of that list. I think pearson has some decent explanations, though they are not the best, but has some excellent review questions. Each set of practice questions seems to have a complete collection of all IB questions ever made related to that topic - you'll essentially be buying a paper version of the question banks. It also contains all the options. I did the calculus option and I think the book covers it pretty well, but not as well as it covers the core topics. I think the strongest point of the pearson book is that it comes with an ebook, so you don't have to lug around thousands of papers where ever you go. Also, the ebook contains pdfs which have worked out answers from each set of questions (that aren't in the back of the book) and tests with which you can test yourself.

 

The older version of the IBID book that I occasionally used has pretty good explanations as far as I remember (I didn't use it very frequently) but it was very verbose and explained things that weren't on the syllabus (especially in the first few pages) but are still interesting if you're interested in math. It has a wide variety of questions, some really straight forward and some pretty challenging ones, which is always good practice, though I felt like not all questions were in the same style as IB questions. I found this version as a pdf, online somewhere. I'm sure that with a bit of googling, you can find it too.

 

Also, if you end up seeing all the books in your list but aren't satisfied, my friend highly recommends the OSC math HL core book - apparently it's excellent (but I have never used it).

[ctrls]

It seems like everyone has a different preference of textbooks for maths (aside from the H&H book, apparently it's to be avoided).

 

I've only used the Cambridge and Oxford books, but I much preferred the Cambridge one. The question difficulty seemed to be appropriately balenced with the coloured ranking, which I didn't feel was the case with the Oxford one. That said, I only used that book at the very beginning of the two years when everything seemed impossibly hard, so my judgement may be biased.

 

I think it's fair to say that if you are after a ton of decent exercises, most textbooks will have that covered. Some may have more mistakes than others, plus there may be differences in the variation of difficulty, but that's about it. I generally didn't really use textbooks to go over concepts, so I can't really comment on that.

[Sofia.]

If you do get the Oxford one, be aware that there are tons of errors in the answers! The worked solutions are much better, though.