My parents said no to those books.

My parents said they would buy me any math book .

And you still have to sign my AoPS books, Mr. Ruscyzk. I forgot to bring them to States last year and you promised you would sign them this year .

Wow. My dad always makes sure we have enough books, as long as they are educational in my house.

As for entertainment books, my mom buys the big ones like Harry Potter, but my sisters and I have to spend our own giftcards on the others.

I'm sure those parents don't have any ill intention to their child, and had some thought out reason for not letting him/her buy the books. Although I personally disagree with them too (my parents don't hesitate to buy me educational materials), I don't think it is our place to say what they did was 'wrong,' 'right,' or 'wiser.'

I don't think there's ill intent involved, but I do think it's fine to comment on opinions of what's best for a child's intellectual development. Sure, I might be wrong. But it just makes me shake my head when a parent doesn't do all they can to feed a child's constructive passion. Makes no sense at all to me.

I'll also add that I find the other parent's approach notably positive, just as I find the 'no book' approach negative. As you might imagine, we see a lot of parents forcing math on their kids. So, I find the first parent's approach particularly wise, and I think it's very hard to argue that it isn't wiser than the alternatives.

My parents sometimes get annoyed at me for doing too much math...

my parents said no on condition: if I can find that book in a local college library then I can't buy it

ex: Geometry revisited, inequalities by littlewood, hardy, and polya, geometric transformations by Yaglom

There's no conceivable reason not to encourage your child's math interests, but I think there is also a very real danger. In some cases, it seems that people buy books as a replacement rather than a tool for learning, as if skimming through 10 different math books will automatically improve your AIME score.

Personally, I always learned out of normal textbooks and supplemented that with Mathcounts or AMC/AIME problems. No special books for me--not that books can't be helpful, but so much of problem-solving is developing your own insights, and that can only happen through hours of struggle with problems just beyond your comfort level.

That's certainly reasonable.

As for parents saying you should back off and not do too much math, that's not unreasonable either - my dad used to drag me out to play tennis frequently. Not because he wanted a better tennis-playing son, but because the balance would help the math. He was right about that - I still try to hit the gym 3-4 times a week, and my work suffers when I fail to make it to the gym.

@probability: that's how I learned to, but for me, there were no other options. Now, there are books that can help accelerate the process if you use them right. But in the end, the key is still the same: doing the problems. Letting reading the text replace doing the problems will dramatically slow learning.

As for the developing your own insights - that's exactly why we structured our new books the way we did. Instead of having 'lessons, then problems', we have 'problems, then lessons covering those problems, then more problems.' So, within our textbooks, they still get that 'developing your own insights' approach that's the key skill in problem solving. By confronting the students with the problems *before the lessons*, we encourage the students to try to figure things out on their own.

That depends on the library! And on the child!

Your books (aside from AoPS vol 1 and vol 2) didn't exist when my children were younger, but our library had lots of great recreational math books (Martin Gardner, Raymond Smullyan, Douglas Hofstadter, Ed Barbeau, Marilyn Burns, etc.) I think the AoPS books are great, but, depending on the student's learning style, those recreational math books could be a perfectly reasonable substitute for your books for some students.

Nowadays, of course, there is no reason why enlightened school libraries and public libraries can't purchase your books to put right alongside their existing recreational math collections. And most certainly, any enlightened college or university with a teacher training program ought to have your books in their reference collection!

Of course, you have far more insight into the family's economic situation than I do in this particular case, but it's possible that you are being too quick to judge the parents. It's possible that the parents have bought books for the child in the past and have seen them gone unused. So it's possible that the parents would like to make a more thoughtful decision about which books to buy, not a spontaneous spur-of-the-moment impulse decision. I know kids whose parents encouraged them to take out library books and then, after seeing the child avidly devour certain library books, would look for others in a similar vein to purchase as special presents for birthdays and holidays. Those books were treasured and used intensively.

I know many large homeschooling families whose children have voracious reading habits and they simply can't afford to buy every book their children might like to own. They may also have limited storage space, be about to move and not want to have more stuff that needs to be packed and shipped, etc. There are so many variables one simply can't know--the parents may have made an agreement with one another to discuss all purchases and not make any on-the-spot decisions. It's entirely possible the parent didn't have the cash on him/her and was trying to avoid the use of credit cards whenever possible.

Libraries are wonderful resources! If I had lots of money to donate, I'd make sure that every school and public library in the country had a great supply of AoPS books and recreational math books.

My parents had very little money when I was growing up, and I learned very early on never to ask for anything at all (not candy or games or books or anything at all)--but I always felt rich in books, because my dad took me to the library frequently and nurtured a love of libraries that has stood me in good stead my entire life.

Indeed, I don't know a ton about the financial background, but given the demographics of the area, I can guess. Moreover, the student has been coming to the SDMC for almost 2 years, so I think the parent has to give the student some credit for wanting to learn the material.

I do understand that there are situations in which the parent is making a reasonable response - child often gets interested in something for a couple days and moves on, money is very tight in the family, etc. (Though I don't buy that last one too much in this case -- the gas to and from the contest probably cost more than what the student could have bought 1 book for; the student is one of many in the SD area who has won a gift certificate from us that would have covered most of the cost of, say, the Counting books.)

I certainly agree that there are great books in the library, but how is the student to find them? There are tons of garbage books in the library, too, and if the student has just watched a dozen others succeed after using our books, it's not unreasonable for them to be reluctant to accept substitutes.

Our office is directly above a library, which has probably saved me over a thousand dollars a year. I'm definitely a huge fan of libraries. Following up on your other thought, if you have any idea how to get libraries to buy our books (several have in the Bay Area, probably at the request of parents or teachers), we'd love to know!

In our family's case, a chance serendipitous encounter with a Martin Gardner book around age 8 might have been a life-changing event. Martin Gardner books quickly became like potato chips...you can't read just one, and the one thing led to another (Douglas Hofstadter, Raymond Smullyan, Ed Barbeau, Simon Singh, Ivan Niven, etc.) We were fortunate to have a really superb collection of recreational math and science books in our local library. I can't recall any "garbage books" on the 510 to 519 Dewey Decimal section of our library--perhaps there were some garbage books, but they didn't particularly engage my kids, so their existence was irrelevant.

For families who live in areas with less enlightened libraries, I'd suggest taking the AoPS recommended booklist to their friendly neighborhood librarians with a request to purchase some of the books on the list:

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/AoPS_R_Books.php.

Homeschoolers in our area have found the local acquisitions librarians remarkably receptive to their suggestions, because circulation figures are very important to them, and their suggestions have a very good circulation track record! (When one homeschooling family raves about a resource to another, they start getting on waiting lists to check the books out, etc.) Homeschoolers are some of public libraries best "customers." (One local branch has been able to double its operating hours simply justified by the increased patronage and circulations from homeschoolers who were happy with their collection and their assistance with InterLibrary Loan requests.)

Homeschool MATHCOUNTS teams have met in library meeting rooms in the past at that branch. In gratitude for free meeting space, the homeschool group sponsoring the team took up an annual collection for a donation each year, with a request that the funds be spent on recreational math books. The librarians have been happy to honor their requests and the homeschoolers always get a kick out of opening up a newly acquired recreational math book and seeing a bookplate in it acknowledging their group as the source of funds for the book.

Many years ago, I purchased a copy of the MAA's "Basic Library List," then a small paperback brochure that listed math books recommended for college, public, and school library collections. Since most librarians do not have an extensive math background themselves, I think they heavily rely on this book in making core collection purchases. I always found that my requests for acquisitions had extra credibility if they were on that list. There is an ongoing effort to update this list, which is now in electronic form here:

http://www.maa.org/BLL/home.htm

Getting the committee updating this list to consider AoPS books for inclusion on this list under the section labelled: "Recreational Mathematics: Contests & Problems" is probably a good way to bring them to the attention of acquisitions librarians.

Actually, my dad was a librarian, and I've long wanted to give a talk at a librarian's convention called "Confessions of a Librarian's Daughter," about the treasures in recreational math reading our family has found at the library over the years.

Thanks much; I'll see if we can get on that list.