Specifically for sciences, math and engineering:
1. Describe a theorem, have maybe one or two examples and the proof of the theorem.
Why: More examples. Now. At the least 5-7 examples. The more examples the students can look at with step by step explanations the better they'll understand the theorem/topic/whatever. Proofs are almost always space-wasters but can be helpful if it's explained in a less dense form. Please oh please explain them better.
2. Placing at the end of the chapter only problem sets that are many times harder than the ones in the examples.
Why: Ease the student into applying the theorem/topics they learned in the chapter. You don't just throw a kid into deep water after only showing them a video on how to swim. There needs to problems for all topics covered in the chapter spanning ALL difficulties. In fact this is the reason that motivated me to write this post in the first place. It wastes the student's time and it wastes your time when the students come into your office hours wondering whether or not there was a chunk of the chapter(s) that the publisher forgot to include because of the disparity between the depth of the problems and the depth of the material.
3. No solutions in the back
Why: You don't even need to provide an explanation if the answer to the problem doesn't ask for justification. Give. Us. Answers. We need to compare the work we've done to see if we've done it right. Otherwise we'll do the problem, it'll be wrong and we won't have the slightest clue until after the solutions are posted if posted at all. It's not at all about "oh kids these days don't know how hard we used to have it, we used to have to figure things out and work together..blah blah". No. I just want to know if I need to spend more time figuring out this problem or not or if I applied something wrong to a problem. That's it.
4. Obscure illustrations and quotes
Why: Simply irrelevant. If I wanted to read the history behind the guy that made up Eulerian graphs/see what the guy looks like/read a quote he wrote I'd go on wikipedia and look him up. Saves you ink and saves your editor time. This crap doesn't give the student any advantage in learning the material or doing well on your exams. It's just one more picture we can draw a penis or hitler stache on. Seriously, we do that.
