The great dilemma about finishing a book!

Now and then I find myself in a very strange position. Whenever I try to finish a technical book (mostly a STEM one), it just hurls a huge number of problems at me. Sometimes, I find myself stuck on the problem set of the very first chapter! By the end of a few such problem sets, exhaustion seems to be knocking on my brain. I don't even remember finishing a technical book in god-knows-how-many years! Solving 20 or 30 problems per chapter is manageable. But, some books pose more than 100 problems at one go.

What should a problem solver do in this situation? Should s/he just skip some or most of the problems? In general, how do one go about finishing a technical book? I'm in dire need of some advice here.

Easy Math Editor

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Comments

I'm not by any means an expert, but since nobody else has said anything I'll just say what I tend to do. There are many problems in books not because they want you to do them all, but because they want you to be able to practice a lot if you need it. So if you don't understand something you'll find that doing a problem makes it a lot simpler to understand. If you are going through the problems easily, then you don't need to keep doing them. But if you are struggling on basic problems, then you should keep working at it.

Sometimes, though, books are mean and they think, "well, the reader got to problem 80, so let's make problem 80 super hard", and the large-numbered problems (or some normal-numbered ones) are just really really difficult. So if you are thinking that the problems are out of the scope of the chapter and don't enjoy them, then I would say you can ignore these as well. I personally like to try to do a couple hard problems because it makes the easy ones seem much simpler and you feel good about finishing them.

So overall, I believe that you should definitely skip problems. I see problems as a way to process the information given in the readings. It is essential to do everything at least once, but beyond that, I think you should just keep on reading. Once you get to more difficult sections, the earlier sections will become more clear so as long as you have enough of a foundation to be able to continue into the next chapter and connect it to previous chapters, you will get the practice you need by going through the next chapter.

Alex Li - 3 years, 7 months ago

Thanks for your feedback. Much appreciated.

Atomsky Jahid - 3 years, 7 months ago

Math	Appears as
Remember to wrap math in `\(` ... `\)` or `\[` ... `\]` to ensure proper formatting.
`2 \times 3`	$2 \times 3$
`2^{34}`	$2^{34}$
`a_{i-1}`	$a_{i-1}$
`\frac{2}{3}`	$\frac{2}{3}$
`\sqrt{2}`	$\sqrt{2}$
`\sum_{i=1}^3`	$\sum_{i=1}^3$
`\sin \theta`	$\sin \theta$
`\boxed{123}`	$\boxed{123}$