118600210 Educ T 119.12.866 COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1911, 1912, BY GEORGE WENTWORTH AND DAVID EUGENE SMITH ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 812.8 HARVARD Aug, 28, 1944 The Athenæum Press PREFACE In deciding upon the plan for a textbook to meet the needs of the schools of New York state, the authors have been guided by the Syllabus in Arithmetic issued by the State Education Department. With the Syllabus constantly before them they have prepared what they believe to be a thoroughly usable book. They believe that this book, with its clear-cut topical arrangement, will appeal to teachers and pupils alike, and that it will meet the needs of the schools in every respect. The rule that has guided the authors in their other works is followed in this one: Present the reason briefly but clearly, and then furnish such an amount of practice that the pupil cannot forget the principle. Theory is reduced to a minimum, and practice is abundant, with both abstract and concrete numbers, since the experience of a century proves beyond question that each of these two lines must be treated fully to prepare the pupils for their future work. This is the spirit of the Syllabus, and it is a thoroughly sound one, representing as it does the sanest modern educational thought. The authors have always insisted that all applied problems should appeal as far as possible to the pupil's interests. In conformity with the spirit of this principle the concrete problems are modern in the best sense. Those that seem to be real are real; modern business customs are followed, and the needs of the future citizen are always kept in mind. But in this book is found no trace of the unfortunate tendency of some of our recent writers to arrange their work without system, to withhold from the pupil the feeling of mastery which is his due, and to consider a problem concrete when it treats of topics or contains technicalities that no pupil understands and few teachers are expected to know. The book covers exactly the topics, grade by grade, laid down in the Syllabus, and also provides for a review of the fundamental operations with integers (pages 1-56), to be used or not as occasion demands. Under each topic will be found an unusually large number of well-graded examples, and at frequent intervals collections of problems without numbers have been inserted as exercises in terse mathematical statement. Any corrections or suggestions relating to the work will be thankfully received. The authors hope that teachers who recognize the strong features of the topical arrangement, who wish for an abundance of well-graded problems requiring thought in their solution, who are sympathetic with the movement to replace what is obsolete by the genuine applications of arithmetic to the American life of to-day, who are opposed to certain of the extreme attempts of the present time that are sure to result disastrously to scholarship- that such teachers will find in this work a sane, modern, and helpful treatment of the subject. GEORGE WENTWORTH |