All Math Words Dictionary: Compact Edition, McAdams David E.

All Math Words Dictionary is designed for students of pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, and intermediate algebra. It is designed using the four Cs of math writing:

• Concise: Definitions are compact, yet understandable.
• Complete: All words and phrases of interest to targeted students are included, plus a few just beyond the scope of the target classes. Tables of symbols and notation, formulas, and units of measurement, plus lists of properties of objects give the student all the information needed to weld their understanding of the concepts and decipher many problems.
• Correct: The definitions have been thoroughly reviewed for mathematical and literary correctness.
• Comprehensible: The definitions are written to be understood by targeted students. Abundant illustrations aid in understanding.

One of the difficulties many students experience in learning math skills has to do with the fact that an entire language, both spoken and written, has grown up around math. Students that acquire that language are successful in math studies. Students that do not acquire that language have serious problems with mathematics. This dictionary is designed to aid in the acquisition of the language of math.

This dictionary has:

• over 3000 entries
• more than 140 notations defined
• in excess of 790 illustrations
• IPA pronunciation guide
• greater than 1400 formulas, equations, definitions, examples, identities and expressions.

While teaching high school math, the author, David E. McAdams, noted that some students did not understand even simple math statements, such as This equation is determinate. Those students who had not acquired a basic math vocabulary were left behind, becoming frustrated and mentally dropping out of class. Mr. McAdams quickly added vocabulary exercises to his classroom teaching, but found that there were no adequate resources for vocabulary acquisition. All of the online math dictionaries and encyclopedias were either woefully incomplete, or written at a college graduate level.

The author began by creating a vocabulary resource for his students, using as a guide the vocabulary actually used in the textbooks the students were using. The list of words swiftly grew, and the task of preparing these resources quickly grew beyond what a full-time teacher could accomplish with all the other activities important to teaching.

Mr. McAdams was amazed at the enormous size of the math vocabulary that students must gain to be fluent in math. He took the development of this important resource seriously, and after devoting nine years to its development, has created All Math Words Dictionary. The list of words and phrases to be defined was collected from various textbooks in use in the United States and United Kingdom. Each of these words was carefully researched to find all of the ways the word was used in math classes for pre-algebra, beginning algebra, geometry and intermediate algebra. The definitions were carefully crafted and critically explored to meet the goals of concise, complete, correct and comprehensible. Usefulness of these definitions for non-native English speakers was considered and pronunciation was developed using the IPA. Knowing that a picture sometimes is worth a thousand words, Mr. McAdams added abundant illustrations to assist students in placing words in a visual context.

The result of this extensive effort is All Math Words Dictionary, an important tool for math teachers.