@futurebird
The photos in that link show marks from the stitching!
@zkamvar

@spacehobo @zkamvar

There was no thread. Just glue. I think they just drill those holes to make the glue stick better. I remember being horrified by the cheapness of the construction of this book (I still have it) for a hardcover book that had a price tag over $200 it was obscene to deliver such a piece of junk.

In the next year I helped the math department transition to using digital books that were free. I couldn't bear to think about students buying and renting these things.

@spacehobo @zkamvar

In theory a Calculus textbook could be an artifact to be treasured and loved. Durable and simple, filled with a refined and teaching tested version of some of the most important ideas in math. A book you'd keep forever. Were textbooks like that I'd not feel bad about asking students to empty their pockets to buy them.

But, the modern textbooks are objects made with contempt. Large and heavy so you know you bought something. Full of junk cluttering up the good parts.

@futurebird@sauropods.win @spacehobo@teh.entar.net @zkamvar@hachyderm.io Ugh, I hate textbooks.

I love the random books people recommend on topics that textbooks should cover, though. For some reason, these random books just have so much more heart and passion, alike to a diary of cool stuff the author learned.

Textbooks, by default, just seem so boring. Even the nicer ones the school got us have really cheap humour.

@futurebird @spacehobo @zkamvar

I taught engineering statistics at the local university for a few years. The text I was assigned was very much like you describe modern textbooks. Further, the publisher would make changes to the book every few years that struck me as mainly an attempt to spoil the used book market.

@wa7iut @spacehobo @zkamvar

Stuart would release a new version of their calculus book and what was the major innovation? A new more compelling treatment of logarithms? Additional example problems?

No. As far as I could tell the main changes were renumbering the chapters and shuffling the problems sets so that if I, the teacher, used the new book students couldn't possibly follow my lessons. All the same problems were still there. Just a new order. It was so transparent.

@wa7iut @spacehobo @zkamvar

This is when I started making my own problem sets and answer keys (and solution keys) which I would distribute to students. I would tell them that they could buy any of SEVEN versions of the textbook (or "find" it online for all I cared)

At this point, I have such a complete course of my own materials and notes I no longer use a textbook for most courses.

I have notes for each lecture, problem sets, answers, solutions, and more.

@wa7iut @spacehobo @zkamvar

When I would teach Analysis with the math majors I *would* make them buy Royden, since in that course one of the things I teach them is "How to Read an Advanced Math Textbook" lessons I'm very proud of writing, and we need a book to be our subject of study.

I want to adapt those lessons for my high school calculus students... but haven't found the right book to be the subject of study for students at that level.

@futurebird
In college, a couple of my profs would list page and exercise numbers for the last several editions of the text. Same deal, they just moved stuff slightly each year. I used 5+ year old books and for some reason the calculus hadn't changed one bit.

@wa7iut @spacehobo @zkamvar

Oh, and it is a little thing, but Royden still has signatures. It's a properly bound book. A REAL book, if you will.

@futurebird Have you seen the sites like TeachersPayTeachers where you can upload your lesson plans and make a little revenue on this side selling them to other teachers?

@hal_pomeranz

Yeah, I've also seen my work and the work of my peers being sold on there by other people.

I share my work with any teachers I'm working with. But, also I like to customize my lessons to each class. I make changes every term, posting new material refined for the needs of the particular students and informed by what I've seen in the past.

But maybe I could look at it again. I have some bad associations with that site but I don't remember exactly why.

@futurebird @spacehobo @zkamvar usually they university gets a huge kickback from the publisher for selling text books at their store. Kudos to you for getting them to move past that.

@futurebird

One of the other losses with the diminished or nonexistent secondary market for used textbooks, is the option for students to find alternative teaching approaches that work better for them.

I was shocked and chagrined when I got to grad school to find that many of the other students made a habit of having two or three different reference textbooks for any difficult course. No one had ever suggested this to me as an undergraduate.

So, when I was teaching, I put that idea out there and relied on it myself.

The department-determined intermediate book was one of three options of equivalent overall quality but very different style.

It was as much a barrier to some students as an advantage to others.

And the so called official ‘Study Guide’ prepared by a different set of authors seemed to come from a yet different way of thought and was riddled with errors in its answer key. More of a trap for the unwary than a help.

So, I would frequently use explanations and examples from the competing texts when they were clear and helpful to give a different entry point into material that students didn’t find intuitive.

I always identified the alternative texts on my syllabus at the beginning of the year and encouraged students to check out used books or library reference copies of the other books to see if those explanations worked better for them.

@spacehobo @zkamvar

@StumpyTheMutt @spacehobo @zkamvar

Our community college wasn't getting anything. Unless it was coming in along some way that I didn't know about.

@writeblankspace
A plant genetics lecturer recommended "cats are not peas" I don't recall much of the course, and certainly don't remember much about the set text. But that little book: I wish I could find it again.
@spacehobo @futurebird @zkamvar

@RedRobyn @writeblankspace @spacehobo @zkamvar

OK maybe not peas, but I often think that Pica is a potato.

@futurebird
I prefer couch potato cats to stealthy hunters. The ecology here is devastated by the latter.
The book is a wee romp through the authors interest in genetics starting with a vet's initial insistence that a tortoiseshell cat must be female, and takes in Mendel's too perfect peas and the work done to show that he fudged his results.

@RedRobyn

Any cat let outdoors alone will hunt, which is why they shouldn't be allowed outside unsupervised.