One Person's meat is ...

["Rauber, Joel Phys" <RAUBERJ@mg.sdstate.edu>]

A contributor to this list wrote:

>  I'm assuming that the "Reif" referred to in Leigh's comment (in
> the context of a thermodynamics discussion) is F. Reif's _Statistical
> and Thermal Physics_, a text I remember having in my junior-year stat
> mech course.  As a student, I HATED the book. Despised it.  Loathed
> it.  It was opaque, unintelligible, and provided (to us students,
> anyway) virtually no conceptual 'hooks' on which to hang the
> mathematical details.

I had the opposite experience, I just LOVED Reif as a student.  I found it 
to be a clear and precise exposistion with interesting and challenging 
problems to be worked, that illucidated the presentation with some nice real 
world examples.  (Incidently, I learned a lot of my probability knowledge 
from the first chapter and the problems concerning card games, throwing dice 
and coins etc.)

Later he writes:

> dry, pedantic, and mind-numbing.
> (I did have some texts that I really liked, works that provided a good
> conceptual framework while expecting - and motivating - a great deal
> of intellectual investment from their readers

For me Reif was the opposite of mind-numbing and did motivate a great deal 
of intellectual investment for me; actually I have quite fond memories of 
that book and the course I took with it.

Joel
rauberj@mg.sdstate.edu