I noted that my son was really being shortchanged in HS when he was taking geometry and I examined the textbook he was using. It was abysmal. I had read an article in the National Review some years before about Saxon Math and looked the series up. What I did was that I purchased the 3 Algebra Saxon books, the Advanced Math book and the Calculus book.

I bribed the boy to do the circa 30 problems each day to work through each book in turn with one day off each week, sometimes more on occasion but then he would make up the pace so he was doing six problem sets per week on average. I almost never had to help him and he self taught himself. (BTW, I had a heavy math background during my education.) My son finished the series by the time he was halfway through this senior year in HS.

Did it help him? I would say yes as he is now a Ph.D. Mechanical Engineer.

Dan Kurt

p.s. I didn’t know the term for the Saxon method of reintroducing problems already covered in problem sets was called interleaving. I had called it recursive problem presentation to reinforce math skills. I considered it a brilliant technique.

Random bit of speculation — interleaving isn’t used too much in schools because the classroom format makes it very demanding on the teacher. If you’ve got 30 kids in a room, you have to expect some fraction is not going to ‘get’ any particular topic that comes up. If you are trying to juggle three at once… well, you’d prefer the smallest fraction be completely lost on the fewesr number of topics at a time.

As was explained to me once, the more people you have in a room, the lower the overall IQ gets. The more people you are dealing with, the simpler you’ve got to make things. Blocking is simpler than interleaving.

Interleaving is probably best for self-directed or one-on-one study.