Category Archives: Publishing

A great text, newly free

[Sheepish apologies for my too-long absence from blogging.  Life!] My friend and GVSU colleague Ted Sundstrom has recently made his wonderful text, Mathematical Reasoning, free to the public.  After being originally published by Prentice Hall in two separate editions and … Continue reading

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Using Geogebra in Calculus

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 … Continue reading

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What Leads to the High Prices of Textbooks?

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 … Continue reading

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It’s Text Selection Time of Year

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 … Continue reading

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Going Free

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 … Continue reading

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Chronicle Articles on Textbooks, E-Books, and More

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 … Continue reading

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Secondary Public Offering: thru integral calculus

As promised last week, here is , 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 … Continue reading

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One year later

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 … Continue reading

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Textbook Inflation

A recent US News and World Report article focuses on the high rate at which textbook costs have been rising and explains how the costs are divided among bookstores and textbook companies. While overall inflation is currently low, not so … Continue reading

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A different challenge to publishers

From Insider Higher Ed, an interesting article on the startup “Boundless Learning”, which endeavors to provide text-like materials to students free of charge. “It does so, essentially, through reverse engineering — identifying widely used textbooks in certain fields (three last … Continue reading

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