Textbook Revolution: OpenMathText.org

OpenMathText.org

David Santos and Alain Schremmer

Filed under: [ c, calculus, linear algebra, math, probability, spanish ]

http://www.openmathtext.org/

Here’s a link to a site with a variety of good materials on several diffferent topics. Several of these have an open source license (OPL). While billed as “lecture notes” most are very comprehensive and look a lot like a textbook.

The notes are available in PDF or .tex source files, are comprehensive but short on wordy descriptions, and cover a variety of topics. Some have been translated to Spanish, and there are reportedly plans to translate more into French. Each packet of notes runs about 100-125 pages.

From the site:

OMTo is the outgrowth of ideas of David SANTOS and Alain Schremmer, both working in Philadelphia.

For years, Santos has been making his lecture notes available to the public, so that students and the public in general may use them free of charge. The LaTeX code for the notes is provided, so that those wishing to modify the material in the notes may do so. The notes constitute Santos’ particular take on a particular subject, but do not deviate much from standard curricula of mathematics courses at community colleges around the United States.

Schremmer’s obsession to help the Great Unwashed (also known as “Just Plain Folk” (JPF) since the 1986 Tulane Conference on Calculus) learn mathematics derives from the fact that, historically, mathematical texts were written for a tiny, self-selected minority, namely those willing-for whatever reason-to put the time and effort necessary to read them and, thus, writers paid no attention whatsoever to their readers’ woes. Moreover, and ipso facto, this tiny minority had to be considered as having a special talent rather than, say, merely being obstinate, or having the linguistic ability to make sense of a priori hermetic texts, or, after mathematics became, of late, the supreme tool for screening students, being endowed with a photographic memory.

Link to website