First Course - Textbook discussion

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

Where on Earth would anyone ever get the idea that education has no costs???

LOL... The most important students in our history indeed spent a great deal of _time_.

Very few of them had to spend money on outdated textbooks....

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by chalsall

LOL... The most important students in our history indeed spent a great deal of _time_.

Very few of them had to spend money on outdated textbooks....

And you, of course, have declared the textbook "out of date" without ever having read it.

Talk about ARROGANCE.

The text is very much NOT out of date. It is an excellent and gentle intro to number theory.
And it is CHEAP.

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by blip

Come and visit Europe: http://europe.graduateshotline.com/free-education.html

These universities are paid for by TAX MONEY. Paid by parents.
There are no DIRECT tuition costs, but they are not FREE.

Do people need a course in economics?

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

The text is very much NOT out of date. It is an excellent and gentle intro to number theory. And it is CHEAP.

My sincere apologies. If I may explain myself...

I don't think it makes sense to move atoms where moving bits makes more sense.

It costs a lot of money to move atoms to little Bimshire. I suspect it equally doesn't make sense to move atoms to transmit bits to many other places.

It would be optimal, in my mind, if this was Creative Commons, so everyone could learn. blip gave several examples.

Could you teach using blip's content?

Or, perhaps, might you take it upon yourself to provide CC material which you could teach from?

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

These universities are paid for by TAX MONEY. Paid by parents.
There are no DIRECT tuition costs, but they are not FREE.

Not just paid by the parents, but by the populous.

We have the same problem here in Barbados -- too many are trained as Doctors and Lawyers, and the best go away after graduation.

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

Do people need a course in economics?

Please! We don't need any more economists! Might as well train many more social scientists who can't get a job at Chefette because they're over qualified....

[Mark Rose]

Originally Posted by chalsall

Or, perhaps, might you take it upon yourself to provide CC material which you could teach from?

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibo...tics_bookshelf

Most relevant here is the Foundations section, starting with Set Theory.

[wblipp]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

Textbooks cost money.

Are you sure? Did you try? Googling free elementary number book textbooks turned up these three that look reasonable.

The first leads to a legal free copy of a Springer-Verlag textbook
The second appears to be a serious community committed to creating free textbooks

http://wstein.org/ent/
http://www.saylor.org/2013/05/blog-f...d-under-cc-by/
http://pressitt.com/smnr/free-elemen...allenge/24456/
http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~wclark/#EL..._NUMBER_THEORY
http://oer.avu.org/handle/123456789/7

[jwaltos]

http://freecomputerbooks.com/Games-of-No-Chance.html

The above link is one of many to free texts and courses. S. Plouffe has some outstanding resources also.
Nothing supplants considered input from an expert. D. Rusin is one educator whom I found to be exceptional in this context.
Few things are a repugnant as "someone educated beyond their intelligence (AC Clarke)" who goes out of their way to
deliberately insult someone whom they deem their intellectual inferior. I have had that experience here but fortunately it was
isolated to one individual (not RDS whom I do respect for his stance).

[VBCurtis]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

I am beginning to think that you are being a deliberate ASSHOLE. The book was
suggested/specified in the very first post in this thread.

Textbooks cost money. Colleges cost money. Even public schools cost money (via taxes).

Where on Earth would anyone ever get the idea that education has no costs?? What have you
been smoking?

1. Given your history for pedantry, and insulting people for not being specific, calling someone an asshole because he wasn't sure what book you referred to is rather ironic. If someone makes a reference unclear to you, you insult them. If someone finds something you said unclear, you insult them.
Can you stop insulting people with the majority of your posts? This thread was specifically started to be a supportive place to discuss elementary topics, and many of us would like your inflammatory style to restrict itself from attacking in this thread.

2. "textbooks cost money" is not an obvious truth. There are many free resources online, and your ignorance of what is available does not justify belittling someone for asking if there are free alternatives for this discussion group. It's not that I wish to celebrate that you're mistaken, it's that you insult a poster for asking a reasonable question; even if the answer is "no" in this case, the answer is "yes" to the same question in many other topics, and you are needlessly aggressive in attacking the poster.

3. There are countless online forums (fora?) where education and study take place without cost. Poker forums, chess forums are two types that include resources for free learning (PDFs, articles, beginner's guides, etc). It is a perfectly reasonable question to ask if number theory has free resources available; that you consider the question worthy of another insult "what have you been smoking?" is more a sign of your lack of consideration of internet resources than it is a sign of the value of the question.

I really really like the idea of this thread, but I don't want open it again to find half the posts are from RDS telling someone why their idea or post is stupid. Those posts are the antithesis of the intent of a discussion group.

[Jayder]

Why do so many threads have to devolve into this? This is beyond ridiculous.

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by VBCurtis

1. Given your history <snip>

Very good post ! +1 from here!


OTOH, we could find the book on torrents (but won't distribute the link, sorry! we don't want to cause any troubles to the authors or to the forum). You can do that too, if your moral conscience allows it.