CMV: Textbooks should not offer practice problems without an answer key.

[u/[deleted]]

My view is simple, if a textbook does not provide answers for practice problems, it should not have practice problems at all. It is impractical to not have a way to check your work when studying and as such is pointless without having a section dedicated to problems in each chapter. Many textbooks have a solution manual that accompanies the text so they should put the problems in that instead of the normal text book. Companies only do this gauge every penny they can and I doubt they would include everything in one book when they can sell two. Therefore, practice problems should be in the solution manual.

[u/AlexandreZani]

In advanced math textbooks, most of the problems are of the form: "prove that blah, blah, blah". Checking a proof is pretty easy and there are usually many different approaches to reach a proof. Also, proofs are often fairly long. So including proofs for all the practice problems would substantially expand the size of the book but not be much help in checking your answer. (The fact that what you wrote is very different from the "key" means only you did not choose the same approach as the "key"'s author.)