sci.math #248957 (36 + 1434 more) [1]+-[1] From: Edwin Clark \-[1]--[1] [1] free math textbooks on the web Date: Thu Dec 18 23:45:35 EST 1997 I have written a set of notes for a one-semester beginning abstract algebra course (in LaTeX), and I have been thinking of making them available free to anyone else who may want to use them. I have been making them available at a local copy shop for students in my class. One problem I can imagine if I put them on the web is that students would be able to print them out from campus printers. This would be expensive for the university. Especially if putting books on the web became popular. Another problem is that someone else might take the notes and publish them in their name. I am sure there are other possible problems that I haven't thought of yet--- Students seem to appreciate it. Photocopying 80 pages is much cheaper than buying any textbooks I know of. In part this is my answer to the rising costs of textbooks in an age when production costs must be going down. So I am looking for information and advice. Any pointers or stories of the experience others may have had with similar ventures would be appreciated. Please email me a copy of any thing you might post on this subject. Thanks, Edwin ==================================================== W. Edwin Clark, Department of Mathematics University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620-5700 eclark@tarski.math.usf.edu End of article 248957 (of 249922) -- what next? [npq] sci.math #248994 (35 + 1434 more) (1)+-[1] From: Chris Hillman \-[1]--[1] [1] Re: free math textbooks on the web Date: Fri Dec 19 10:03:49 EST 1997 Don't worry about that, this is something they will need to subsidize anyway and in fact they already do. In any case, surely the paper budget is relatively small for most universities, compared to physical plant, buying journals, etc. Also, many copy centers seem to have a terminal a customer can use to download something he can then print for a reasonable per page fee, so non-students also have access to this material. > Another problem is that someone else might take the > notes and publish them in their name. I've -never- heard of that happening! I have had some (rather unorganized) course material in linear algebra on the web for some time, at my page
  • Lin Algebra (Hillman)
    and have recieved some gratifying positive feedback from other instructors who found some of what I had there useful/inspiring. > Students seem to appreciate it. Photocopying 80 pages > is much cheaper than buying any textbooks I know of. > In part this is my answer to the rising costs of > textbooks in an age when production costs must be > going down. Yes, indeed! I think web publishing and freeware is a wonderful thing, to my mind the principal problem is that the author may have total responsibility for finding any errors in his work. But I have found that readers are pretty good about reporting any errors they do find. > So I am looking for information and advice. Any pointers or > stories of the experience others may have had with > similar ventures would be appreciated. I'd urge you to go ahead, I think that putting stuff on the web is a professional responsibility of faculty these days :-) Chris Hillman (graduate student) End of article 248994 (of 249922) -- what next? [npq] sci.math #249007 (34 + 1434 more) (1)+-(1) From: rusin@vesuvius.math.niu.edu (Dave Rusin) \-[1]--[1] [1] Re: free math textbooks on the web Date: Fri Dec 19 11:54:13 EST 1997 The only _real_ problem with books on the web is the lack of quality control. As soon as the academic world can take charge of the gatekeeper function which publishers currently carry out, the web will be a very natural and useful means of disseminating books. By its nature, however, it seems better suited to glossaries, handbooks, and so on, rather than texts. (I still don't want to take a computer into the tub with me.) I've been collecting links to online texts for use in my site's resource lists. Here are some of the ones I've found so far; if anyone knows of any _essentially complete_, _mathematically sound_ online textbooks (at least college level but not research articles or preprints), please send them to me; if I get more than a few I'll post a summary to this newsgroup. dave End of article 249007 (of 249922) -- what next? [npq] sci.math #249203 (33 + 1434 more) (1)+-(1) From: lady@Hawaii.Edu (Lee Lady) \-(1)--[1] [1] Re: free math textbooks on the web Followup-To: sci.math Date: Sun Dec 21 13:59:47 EST 1997 >
  • Online >graduate text in ring theory. Thanks for your list of links. The URL above for my site does work, but I think that www.math.Hawaii.Edu is probably preferable. What I have is a pretty complete outline of a graduate algebra course oriented around ring and module theory. Almost no group theory in the course, and very little field theory in the notes on the web site, since that part of the course was extremely standard. Also there are a whole bunch of proofs of specific theorems and the like. However it falls way short of being a textbook. The notes are offered in postscript, dvi, pdf (Adobe Acrobat) or idvi format. I also have some notes for specialized topics in homological algebra. These are certainly not essentially complete and certainly not for beginners. I hope they are basically mathematically sound, but I can't guarantee it. Try homolog. In addition, on Hawaii.Edu/~lee there's a whole lot of materials for undergraduate courses. A lot of this consists of brief notes originally used as classroom hand-outs and probably of limited value taken in isolation. But there are also some longer sets of notes written especially for the web. While it's all standard material, I do think that the presentation in some cases makes it useful. My current project is trying to write an approach to applications of integration that will be understandable to beginning calculus students and will promote the idea that you don't really need to re-invent the Riemann integral each time you teach a new application. In most cases, all you really need to do is to find a formula that gives the correct answer in the case of constant functions. (All you really need to do is to find the appropriate measure.) (For instance, in the case of volumes of revolution, if your formula gives the correct answer for (solid) cylinders then it's correct.) I hope that this will be finally complete within a month, but the rough draft can be looked at now: calculus/Integrals.* where * is dvi, ps, or pdf. It's about 40 pages now, which is absurdly long, considering that the basic idea only takes a paragraph or two to explain. But I want to say everything that a beginning calculus student will need to follow it. Whether I've done something useful here, or just made a fool of myself remains to be seen. -- Trying to understand learning by studying schooling is rather like trying to understand sexuality by studying bordellos. -- Mary Catherine Bateson, Peripheral Visions lady@Hawaii.Edu End of article 249203 (of 249922) -- what next? [npq]

    Path: news.sri.ucl.ac.be!naxos.belnet.be! ...
    From: d012560c@aol.comNoBasura (D012560c) Newsgroups: sci.math.research Subject: Re: Mathematics texts as free downloads Date: 6 Oct 2000 15:05:03 -0500 Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Lines: 109 Approved: Dave Rusin , moderator for sci.math.research Message-ID: <20001004105147.19058.00000269@ng-fb1.aol.com> References: <39CA20AF.69F18E75@ams.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: vesuvius.math.niu.edu X-Trace: gannett.math.niu.edu 970862704 4446 131.156.3.93 (6 Oct 2000 20:05:04 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@math.niu.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Oct 2000 20:05:04 GMT Xref: news.sri.ucl.ac.be sci.math.research:13078 >If you know of links to research-level mathematics (or mathematically >related) books online For notes on measure theory, go to http://www.probability.net For notes on category theory and combinatorics, go to www.brics.aau.dk You will find there: LS-95-1 Jaap van Oosten. Basic Category Theory. January 1995. vi+75 pp. and LS-95-4 Dany Breslauer and Devdatt P. Dubhashi. Combinatorics for Computer Scientists. August 1995. viii+184 pp.
    Also try the links from geometry.net
    Stefan Bilaniuk A Problem Course in Mathematical Logic (2 Vol.) trentu.ca LaTeX, PDF, PostScript
    Edwin H. Connell Elements of Abstract and Linear Algebra math.miami DVI, PDF, PostScript
    Maarten M Fokkinga A Gentle Introduction to Category Theory twente.nl PostScript
    Allen Hatcher Algebraic Topology cornell PDF, PostScript
    John H. Heinbockel Introduction to Tensor Calculus and Continuum Mechanics odu.edu PDF
    E.T. Jaynes Probability Theory: The Logic Of Science wustl PDF, PostScript
    John Lindsay Orr Analysis WebNotes unl.edu HTML
    Marko Petkovsek, Herbert Wilf and Doron Zeilberger A = B cis.upenn PDF
    Paul Taylor Practical Foundations of Mathematics dcs.qmw.ac.ukHTML
    Herbert Wilf Algorithms and Complexity cis.upenn PDF
    Herbert Wilf generatingfunctionology math.upenn PDF

    The following two titles require a $10 payment for "more than casual use":
    D. Estep and C. Johnson Practical Analysis in One Variable http://www.mathphysics.com/claestep/book.html PDF
    Evans M. Harrell II and James V. Herod Linear Methods of Applied Mathematics http://www.mathphysics.com/pde/ HTML, PDF (Chapters 1-10 only)

    Quite a few titles are available from the On-Line Books Page (upenn books); a list of all titles in math and computer science can be found at QA . Most are older works made available as page images (GIF) from Cornell.

    You might also be interested in J.S. Milne's homepage, jmilne , which includes extensive lecture notes (DVI, PDF, PostScript) for courses in Group Theory, Fields and Galois Theory, Algebraic Geometry, Algebraic Number Theory, Modular Functions and Modular Forms, Elliptic Curves, Abelian Varieties, Lectures on Etale Cohomology, and Class Field Theory. Marvin Hernandez

     

    MIT's OpenCourseWare , Strang linear algebra