Last week Thursday I gave a colloquium talk at a local college on some of my favorite results in the area of mathematics known as “the geometry of polynomials.” During the talk, I used a couple of demonstrations built in Geogebra. When I did so, I asked my audience of approximately 50 students (almost all […]
Lots of hard work goes into the writing of any textbook. No question about that. But few textbook companies front that money to the author(s). Further, while textbook companies regularly cite the high costs of developing and producing texts, those seem overstated to me. For example, after our for-profit differential equations with linear algebra text […]
If your school is like mine, the university bookstore is clamoring for textbook selections to be announced for the coming year. To that end, I want to add my voice to the many who are urging faculty to consider free or other low-cost options for students. While this has been a consistent theme here on […]
I’m starting to get more and more email traffic that puts me in contact with people or organizations who are taking concrete steps to implement an overall strategy for the adoption of free and/or open source textbooks. This post is focused on two such exciting examples. 1. The State of California. Go big or go […]
My friend and colleague Robert Talbert recently pointed me to a big collection of articles over at the Chronicle that are focused on the many issues surrounding textbooks on college campuses. Lots of worthwhile reading there. One article asks about the feasibility of any textbook remaining truly free, noting that perhaps state governments could play […]
As promised last week, here is the newest version of Active Calculus, now with four additional chapters that can be used for the second semester of university calculus. The link above is to the full text, all of chapters 1-8, as a Google document that should be embedded in your browser. From the new Active […]
A year ago at this time, I was about to embark on my sabbatical. I had drafted a couple of brief sections of what would become Active Calculus, but had almost nothing of substance written. By May, I had a working draft of four chapters of material, essentially the standard topics of university calculus I; […]
