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http://store.doverpublications... From the dover-books website :

"This book is intended to assist scientists in planning and carrying out research. However, unlike most books dealing with the scientific method, which stress its philosophical rationale, this book is written from a practical standpoint. It contains a rich legacy of principles, maxims, procedures and general techniques that have been found useful in a wide range of sciences.

While much of the material is accessible to a college senior, the book is more specifically intended for students beginning research and for those more experienced research workers who wish an introduction to various topics not included in their training. Mathematical treatments have been kept as elementary as possible to make the book accessible to a broad range of scientists. Its principles and rules can be absorbed to advantage by workers in such diverse fields as agriculture, industrial and military research, biology and medicine as well as in the physical sciences.

After discussing such basics as the choice and statement of a research problem and elementary scientific method, Professor Wilson offers lucid and helpful discussions of the design of experiments and apparatus, execution of experiments, analysis of experimental data, errors of measurement, numerical computation and other topics. A final chapter treats the publication of research results.

Although no book can substitute for actual scientific work, this highly pragmatic compendium contains much knowledge gained the hard way through years of actual practice. Moreover, the author has illustrated the ideas discussed with as many actual examples as possible. In addition, he has included notes and references at the end of each chapter to enable readers to investigate particular topics more deeply. E. Bright Wilson, Jr. is a distinguished scientist and educator whose previous works include Molecular Vibrations and Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (with Linus Pauling). In the present book, he has distilled years of experiment and experience into an indispensable broad-based guide for any scientific worker tackling a research problem. Reprint of the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1952 edition. - See more at: http://store.doverpublications..."

http://store.doverpublications... From the dover-books website :

"This book is intended to assist scientists in planning and carrying out research. However, unlike most books dealing with the scientific method, which stress its philosophical rationale, this book is written from a practical standpoint. It contains a rich legacy of principles, maxims, procedures and general techniques that have been found useful in a wide range of sciences.

While much of the material is accessible to a college senior, the book is more specifically intended for students beginning research and for those more experienced research workers who wish an introduction to various topics not included in their training. Mathematical treatments have been kept as elementary as possible to make the book accessible to a broad range of scientists. Its principles and rules can be absorbed to advantage by workers in such diverse fields as agriculture, industrial and military research, biology and medicine as well as in the physical sciences.

After discussing such basics as the choice and statement of a research problem and elementary scientific method, Professor Wilson offers lucid and helpful discussions of the design of experiments and apparatus, execution of experiments, analysis of experimental data, errors of measurement, numerical computation and other topics. A final chapter treats the publication of research results.

Although no book can substitute for actual scientific work, this highly pragmatic compendium contains much knowledge gained the hard way through years of actual practice. Moreover, the author has illustrated the ideas discussed with as many actual examples as possible. In addition, he has included notes and references at the end of each chapter to enable readers to investigate particular topics more deeply. E. Bright Wilson, Jr. is a distinguished scientist and educator whose previous works include Molecular Vibrations and Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (with Linus Pauling). In the present book, he has distilled years of experiment and experience into an indispensable broad-based guide for any scientific worker tackling a research problem. Reprint of the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, 1952 edition. - See more at: http://store.doverpublications..."

Yes, they can reprint out-of-print books that are more than 100 years old, but they can no longer reprint out-of-print books that are 30 years old, which is how they started in the 1950s. I still can't get the Dover books that I read in the 1960s, because they're orphaned, copyrighted books.

They couldn't even reprint the 1917 edition of Growth and Form. http://store.doverpublications... They had to get permission and pay royalties to Cambridge.

I did do a bit of research on this because I work in the publishing industry, and I know a couple of publishers who have reprinted out-of-print books. I found out that some of the classics were out of print, and I thought it would be a good idea to reprint them.

One of them was Yevgeney Perelman's Physics for Entertainment, which is part of a series, which wasn't even copyrighted because the Soviet Union didn't believe in copyright at that time. Perelman died in the siege of Leningrad. After the fall of the Soviet Union, they went out of print. I talked to some librarians and copyright researchers, and it was impossible to track down who had the ownership under the new copyright law. Was it Russia? Was it his surviving heirs? Were there contracts? A lot of publishers didn't even keep their old contracts after the 26-year copyright expired, and now suddenly the copyright was extended to 100 years after the author's death. Publishers went out of business, and their files were destroyed. They signed contracts based on a 26-year term, so it's not clear who owns the rights afterwards. A lot of times you can't even find out when or if the author died. Every so often somebody will publish Perelman's books, but it's illegal. A publisher explained to me that if he were to get caught, which is unlikely, he would just pay royalties. People have also posted Perelman's books on the Internet, but that's also illegal. (Although the copyright law is so complicated, especially for international works, that it would cost thousands of dollars or more in legal fees to figure out what copyright law applies.) The problem with just doing it illegally is that a library can't make their collection illegally available on the Internet. That's why Google books has gaps.

I can't research Dover's catalog and give you a definitive answer, but Project Guttenberg ran into this problem and wrote about it in detail. I've talked to librarians. The copyright laws have made it impossible to exchange published works that were in the public domain before. That was the purpose of the Sony Bono Copyright Act.

If you're a copyright lawyer and you know otherwise, I'd be happy to know how I can publish those orphaned works.

Dover of course used to re-publish the out-of-copyright and out-of-print math and science classics. There was a time when a professor could have a rare out-of-print book, that nobody else could get, and teach an entire class out of that book. Dover put an end to that.

Of course the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act put an end to Dover (or at least their reprint business) by extending the copyright to 100 years after the author's death.

Does anyone ever bother to fact-check their rants before posting them to Slashdot?

Astronomy
Biology and Medicine
Chemistry
Computer Science
Earth Science
Engineering
General Science
Mathematics
Physics

Dover of course used to re-publish the out-of-copyright and out-of-print math and science classics. There was a time when a professor could have a rare out-of-print book, that nobody else could get, and teach an entire class out of that book. Dover put an end to that.

Of course the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act put an end to Dover (or at least their reprint business) by extending the copyright to 100 years after the author's death.

Does anyone ever bother to fact-check their rants before posting them to Slashdot?

Astronomy
Biology and Medicine
Chemistry
Computer Science
Earth Science
Engineering
General Science
Mathematics
Physics

Dover of course used to re-publish the out-of-copyright and out-of-print math and science classics. There was a time when a professor could have a rare out-of-print book, that nobody else could get, and teach an entire class out of that book. Dover put an end to that.

Of course the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act put an end to Dover (or at least their reprint business) by extending the copyright to 100 years after the author's death.

Does anyone ever bother to fact-check their rants before posting them to Slashdot?

Astronomy
Biology and Medicine
Chemistry
Computer Science
Earth Science
Engineering
General Science
Mathematics
Physics

Dover of course used to re-publish the out-of-copyright and out-of-print math and science classics. There was a time when a professor could have a rare out-of-print book, that nobody else could get, and teach an entire class out of that book. Dover put an end to that.

Of course the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act put an end to Dover (or at least their reprint business) by extending the copyright to 100 years after the author's death.

Does anyone ever bother to fact-check their rants before posting them to Slashdot?

Astronomy
Biology and Medicine
Chemistry
Computer Science
Earth Science
Engineering
General Science
Mathematics
Physics

Dover of course used to re-publish the out-of-copyright and out-of-print math and science classics. There was a time when a professor could have a rare out-of-print book, that nobody else could get, and teach an entire class out of that book. Dover put an end to that.

Of course the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act put an end to Dover (or at least their reprint business) by extending the copyright to 100 years after the author's death.

Does anyone ever bother to fact-check their rants before posting them to Slashdot?

Astronomy
Biology and Medicine
Chemistry
Computer Science
Earth Science
Engineering
General Science
Mathematics
Physics

Dover of course used to re-publish the out-of-copyright and out-of-print math and science classics. There was a time when a professor could have a rare out-of-print book, that nobody else could get, and teach an entire class out of that book. Dover put an end to that.

Of course the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act put an end to Dover (or at least their reprint business) by extending the copyright to 100 years after the author's death.

Does anyone ever bother to fact-check their rants before posting them to Slashdot?

Astronomy
Biology and Medicine
Chemistry
Computer Science
Earth Science
Engineering
General Science
Mathematics
Physics

Dover of course used to re-publish the out-of-copyright and out-of-print math and science classics. There was a time when a professor could have a rare out-of-print book, that nobody else could get, and teach an entire class out of that book. Dover put an end to that.

Of course the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act put an end to Dover (or at least their reprint business) by extending the copyright to 100 years after the author's death.

Does anyone ever bother to fact-check their rants before posting them to Slashdot?

Astronomy
Biology and Medicine
Chemistry
Computer Science
Earth Science
Engineering
General Science
Mathematics
Physics

Dover of course used to re-publish the out-of-copyright and out-of-print math and science classics. There was a time when a professor could have a rare out-of-print book, that nobody else could get, and teach an entire class out of that book. Dover put an end to that.

Of course the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act put an end to Dover (or at least their reprint business) by extending the copyright to 100 years after the author's death.

Does anyone ever bother to fact-check their rants before posting them to Slashdot?

Astronomy
Biology and Medicine
Chemistry
Computer Science
Earth Science
Engineering
General Science
Mathematics
Physics

Dover of course used to re-publish the out-of-copyright and out-of-print math and science classics. There was a time when a professor could have a rare out-of-print book, that nobody else could get, and teach an entire class out of that book. Dover put an end to that.

Of course the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act put an end to Dover (or at least their reprint business) by extending the copyright to 100 years after the author's death.

Does anyone ever bother to fact-check their rants before posting them to Slashdot?

Astronomy
Biology and Medicine
Chemistry
Computer Science
Earth Science
Engineering
General Science
Mathematics
Physics

To the professors out there. Textbooks don't have to be so expensive. Dover has great titles for under $30. My analysis class was taught with a Dover book and a good teacher. Worked great and saved me who knows how many hundreds of dollars.

Best advice.

Selected math oriented reading list:

A Book of Abstract Algebra -- Pinter One of the best book I read. Next read Algebra -- Artin
Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms -- MacKay
Iterative Error Correction: Turbo, Low-Density Parity-Check and Repeat-Accumulate Codes -- Sarah Johnson Amazing book (most in the domain are uselessly and horrifyingly complex). I advise to read beforehand the here-down Plank paper.

Introduction to Calculus and Analysis vol I -- Courant Vol II/1 Vol II/2 Best book I know for Calculus/Analysis

The Feynman Lectures on Physics Not math nor computer science but makes you a better scientist.

Selected must read papers:

Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System --Lamport
How to Share a Secret -- Adi Shamir
A Tutorial on Reed-Solomon Coding for Fault-Tolerance in RAID-like Systems -- James S. Plank

Dover publications is alive and well http://store.doverpublications.com/

for something similar but possibly geekier also see
http://www.lindsaybks.com/

Not a publisher exactly, but you might also check out:
http://lateralscience.blogspot.com/

hmm.. my AC CAPTHCA is 'autocrat'

Are you saying it's not innovating? Classical sheet music is very, very expensive.

Goldberg Variations: BWV 988 $7.95

Upon its 1742 publication, Bach entitled it "Keyboard Practice, consisting of an Aria with Diverse Variations, for the Harpsichord with 2 Manuals. Composed for Music Lovers, to Refresh their Spirits." As Glenn Gould remarked, the title offers a very down-to-earth description of a monumental work. Long regarded as the Baroque era's most important set of variations, the Goldbergs were relatively unknown when he chose them for his recording debut in [1955.] The sensation created by his still-popular recordings revivified the piece in concert performances, in which spectators delight in its virtuosic hand-crossings.

Reprint of the Gesellschaft, Leipzig, 1853 edition.

Bach: Goldberg Variations [Gould, 1955], Bach: The Goldberg Variations [Gould. 1981] MP3 samples for both.

Two very different approaches to the same work.

In presenting the "Variations" to a modern audience, do you use an arrangement from 1742 or the 1853 Leipzig edition?

Glenn Gould from 1955? Glenn Gould from 1981? Or should you be rolling your own?

The choices are never so simple as mechanically playing a "piano roll" score in the public domain.

Here's a rather contrarian viewpoint about plant diversity and natives vs. exotics. In a nutshell, Hudson argues that the decline in biodiversity is so severe ( due, essentially to humans paving the planet ) that most sources of plant diversity should be encouraged. Additionally he points out difficulties in defining "exotic" and "native" due to the way seeds spread naturally. This from a fellow who for many many years has been a source of seeds of rare and unique plants. He argues that feel-good councils that make rules about invasive and exotic species may do more harm than good. An interesting view from someone that I have a lot of respect for.

If there is even less diversity in the plant world than we thought, then I guess his argument may be even stronger. Anyway, possibly something more interesting to read ( ha! yes I know this is /. ) than the OP.

Related, excellent read, for those interested Plants, Man, and Life

Are you serious? Point 1: in the domain name Hudson states clearly his position -- he sells seeds of exotic plants. This should immediately set alarm bells ringing.

His argument in the linked-to "article" is utter nonsense. There is no doubt in the scientific community that non-indigenous plants cause incredible damage. They [the exotic plants] can displace native counterparts, change soil conditions (abiotic AND biotic), retard germination of native species, out-compete native species, and so on. Partly (but only partly) this can sometimes be because the introduced species have no competition (e.g. predators) in the environment into which they are introduced; they can grow and multiply with nothing in their way (i.e. they have an advantage over the native species). Introduced (exotic) plants can and do result in immeasurable damage to local ecosystems. Let me take your username as an indication of where you live and suggest you look up Kudzu. Now, tell me the benefits it provides in its introduced environments. Hudson is a fool.

Here's a rather contrarian viewpoint about plant diversity and natives vs. exotics. In a nutshell, Hudson argues that the decline in biodiversity is so severe ( due, essentially to humans paving the planet ) that most sources of plant diversity should be encouraged. Additionally he points out difficulties in defining "exotic" and "native" due to the way seeds spread naturally. This from a fellow who for many many years has been a source of seeds of rare and unique plants. He argues that feel-good councils that make rules about invasive and exotic species may do more harm than good. An interesting view from someone that I have a lot of respect for.

If there is even less diversity in the plant world than we thought, then I guess his argument may be even stronger. Anyway, possibly something more interesting to read ( ha! yes I know this is /. ) than the OP.

Related, excellent read, for those interested Plants, Man, and Life

Why is it so hard for them to understand that at one time, music was about artistic expression?
If nobody could ever make one penny from their music, I guarantee you that music would not die.

The Jubilee Singers and Their Songs [1892] introduced a larger - white - audience to 139 work songs and spirituals of the plantation South.

300 years of an authentic folk tradition.

Which exposes an uncomfortable truth about "the music of the people:"

There is never very much of it.

ASCAP is a performance-rights organization founded in 1914.

Early members included Victor Herbert, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, John Philip Sousa, Hoagy Carmichael, Dorothy Fields, George and Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein II, W.C. Handy, Louis Armstrong, Lorenz Hart, Jimmy McHugh, Richard Rodgers, Fred Rose and Harry Warren.

The geek might not recognize all the names. But he does know their music.

Harry Warren wrote over 500 songs for the movies, among them, Forty-Second Street, Lullaby of Broadway, We're In The Money, Serenade in Blue, and Chattanooga Choo Choo.

Fred Rose, Hank Williams and Jimmie Rogers were the first to be initiated into The Country Music Hall of Fame.

I taught my self calculus at 15 out of this book: Calculus Refresher A. A. Klaf, still available from http://store.doverpublications.com/0486203700.html ($14.95). Most of it stuck through Physics (BSc MSc) and Med School. Only use I have now is mental recreation.

All Popular Mechanics does is demonstrate that the people populating the middle and left of the IQ Gaussian are active consumers. In this, it stands shoulder to shoulder with the National Enquirer, Fox News, and other amazingly low quality media outlets.

This is really quire unfair when you look at the magazine historically.

Popular Mechanics published science and craft projects for both kids and adults for the better part of 100 years.

The books, with titles like The Boy Mechanic, have been reprinted often - and the originals are treasured.

Mission Furniture: How to Make It

How To Draw Cartoons the U.S. Army Way!

Popular Mechanics Build-It-Yourself Ranch-Type House

You might try Ian Stewart's Concepts of Modern Mathematics. Quoting from the end of the book:

The reader who has persevered this far must by now be a cultivator of mathematics, even if he was not at the start of the endeavour. He will therefore appreciate that, while it may be ancient and venerable, it is far from complete; that not all of it is dry; and that its reasoning has not always been either unambiguous or irrefutable - nor is it yet.

Which really captures what the book is about. It's an extremely accessible introduction to abstract algebra, topology, probability, and several other topics. It does a great job of presenting the overall structure of mathematics, and giving just enough of an idea of what's going on to make you want to learn more, without being dry, boring, or bogged down in details. I found it quite an inspiring book, and several friends that I lent it to found the same. Judging from the Amazon reviews, we weren't the only ones. All that, plus it's available as a low-cost Dover book :-)

Dover publishes textbooks that are old, but still useful, for a far more reasonable price than they charge for new textbooks.

I agree with you to a very large degree.

However, the revolution doesn't have to come with eBooks. Many schools make extensive use of publishers such as Dover Books, who specialize in printing out-of-copyright material very inexpensively.

If good public-domain textbooks were available, an entire industry would quickly spring up to print these books as cheaply as possible. Printing doesn't have to be expensive, and a good book can last through several generations of student... I've been a big critic of the OLPC project, primarily because these free texts don't yet exist, and because their existance would allow us to print dozens of books for less than the cost of an XO.

Many educators are fed up with the "New Maths" that have been shoved in their faces, and I imagine that there (hopefully) will be some sort of grassroots effort to build a solid base of public-domain educational texts. Although I wouldn't be terribly keen on the government literally "writing history", I'm sure many state governments would be willing to fund such an effort.

Frankly, I preferred the old texbooks, and the traditional methods of teaching to the new stuff that was forced on us. Writing a textbook that teaches basic concepts, and provides a few homework questions for reinforcement isn't rocket science. "The rest" should be left up to the Instructor to fine-tune to their own individual students.

Also, thanks to Wikipedia, much of the framework is already in place. It should be fairly trivial to restructure (and verify) Wikipedia content into a series of educational textbooks, given that most of the hard work has already been done.

Let me ask this. If the laptop were $100, or as with the spin off $75, what would be the incentive to spend billions of dollars on textbooks? The text book market is in for a good gutting.

IP geeks may be interested to know that the illustrations on O'Reilly's covers are generally public domain works from the Dover pictorial archive. Dover Publications, if you don't know, is an invaluable publishing house that specializes in budget-priced literature and art books (especially clip art); many, perhaps most, of their publications use public domain material.

(As an aside, you may also be interested to know that their clip art collections aren't entirely unemcumbered -- while the individual works are public domain, their collections are copyrighted derivative works, and they place limits on commercial use of art from their collections.)

I'm *not* necessarily taking Google's side here, just playing devil's advocate to see what happens with the discussion.

IANAL, but free (beer) != free (unencumbered). An encyclopedia might be PD, which means there are no restrictions on copying or using it, but you still may need to pay some sort of money to acquire the material. You *are* paying for your internet connection to get to the webopedia, right?

Likewise, IIRC, Dover Books makes money by reprinting old textbooks that have gone PD after their copyrights expired, but you still need to pay to get a copy because there are printing costs, etc.

"Why not make space, or at least the space around the earth, the same as the air: the space above a particular country belongs to that country, space above the international oceans is open to all. Thus it would be necessary to have other countries' permissions before orbiting anything over them..."

This is completely impractical for everything except Geosynchronous satellites. Most satellites' orbits are designed to accomplish specific mission objectives, and if they happen to fly directly over (say) Burma, North Korea, or Zimbabwe that's just how it works. If you are interested in general orbit mechanics, you could consult Bate, Mueller and White's Fundamentals of Astrodynamics. More specifics about orbit mission design are in Wertz and Larsen's Space Mission Analysis and Design. Each is a classic.

Political problems: This would give every 2-penny tinpot dictator in the world license to put up a tollbooth in space. Should a scientific satellite that measures worldwide ocean wave heights have to get permission from said dictators to fly over their countries? How about search and rescue satellites? Telecommunications? GPS?

As to the issue of Moon resources... well I'm not too sure what sorts of treaties have been ratified, but I think it's a little early to worry about it. Even if there are tons of He-3 on the Moon we have no way to make use of it. Just about every other material resource on the moon (Al, O, Mg, etc) is in abundance on Earth. These resources will be useful for in-situ manufacturing, but economically not worth the candle here.

...then you definitely owe it to yourself to check out Dover books.

They buy up and republish as paperbacks some classic old textbooks such as

• Hydrodynamics, Lamb
• Principles of Statistical Mechanics, Tolman
• Ordinary Differential Equations, Ince
• Theory of Brownian Movement, Einstein
• Radiative Transfer, Chandrasekhar

The only problem is that there are still a few fantastic great old books out there that would really benefit the community if they were re-published as inexpensive paperbacks, but the owners of the copyrights for these out-of-print classics and would-be republishers cannot seem to get together...

Yes, you are being unfair. The spelling mistake is called a typo. And you may not know me personally, but I guess you now do know someone who has read Cantor's own words...me! I'm glad you met Aczel, I've never had the pleasure.

And yes, I have read the Principia (English translation), several times. That's pretty much a mandatory read for anybody serious about pure mathematics. And I've also read original (translated) works from Cantor, Euclid, Barendregt, Godel (sorry for the missing accent, I know how to spell it), Curry, Dedekind, and I'm sure many others I'm forgetting now. Yes, Cantor's work is very challenging because of his strange notation; but that's one of the reasons I love reading the original works rather than the pop-rehashes, you get to really see the inner thoughts and reasoning of those mathemeticians. My personal favorite is Russell; I guess it's kind of ironic that his is the name I mispelled.

BTW, another great book about Cantor (by someone other than Cantor himself) is "Georg Cantor: His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite" by Joseph Warren Dauben. It is more of a thorough history and does not shy away from hard math, so I didn't originally mention it to the /. crowd.

Also, for those who may be encouraged to attempt to read some original material if you find all these pop books too fluffy, I do highly recommend trying some of the real books. Dover is a great single source for many clasics, at

doverpublications.com

Some are definitely easier reads than others, but it's worth trying. You do of course have to be aware that some of the things said may have been proven wrong, but that doesn't take away from the enjoyment of reading the author's original words rather than a dumbed-down retelling by someone else. Godel's theorem is especially interesting in this respect, as his proof is way more complex than most of the modern retellings, after people have found short cuts and easier notations. But that makes reading the original that much more rewarding.

Calculus volumes 1 and 2 by Tom Apostol (1967, 1969)
Mathematical Analysis by Tom Apostol (1974)
Introduction to Probability Theory And Its Applications volumes 1 and 2 by Feller (1968, 1971)
Principles of Mathematical Analysis by Walter Rudin (1976)
Real and Complex Analysis by Walter Rudin (1986)
Functional Analysis by Walter Rudin (1991)

My gosh...they are expensive!
But no way would my mathematics library be complete without them and others of similar quality.
They're OLD and EXPENSIVE, but they're the BEST.

Of course, for reasonably priced math books, you can't beat Dover publications.
The American Mathematical Society has some reasonable and excellent books in their bookstore., not to mention a few free ones as well.

Dover Publications still publishes a few of these for incredibly low prices.

Actually, in the newer additions of "Calculus Made Easy", (a classic in "dummy" or rote calculus) Martin Gardner addresses why Calculus books are so thick (and cost so much). Frankly, companies are afraid to leave anything out. Quite often these books are used for 3 classes (up to multivariate calculus). When a professor and/or department are looking at a calculus book they are often factoring in many things. At the big engineering schools students from numerous departments will be taking this course. Thus the need to cover a little bit of everything. You've got to worry about the accreditation boards. You've also got to factor in the poor high school preperation of the average calculus student. Plus, you've got to add in the high failure rate (the books shouldn't make the class harder).

Frankly, I don't mind spending a bit of money on the books for any introductory course sequences. If the books are good, I'd use them for reference.

I'd love to see more open source math books. With that said, why not use a Dover book. Dover publications often reprints classics in the field. These books are dirt cheap. Some people love Dover books and some people loath them. Still, you can't beat the price.

Frankly, I like Micheal Spivak's Calculus books. If you want a quick refresher (i.e. if you're an engineer, etc) try "Calculus Made Easy" by Silvanus P. Thompson.

There is a company that more or less does this already--Dover.

They specialize in books that have been out of print for some years. They usually have a quite excellent selection, and their prices are almost always under $25. Most of their math or science books I've looked at at amazon tend to be 4-5 stars and 20-30% off list! It's really a cheap way to build an amazing library.

Their calculus section for example is quite extensive, and I see several undergrad textbooks. While the books are paperback, the paper is not thin and flimsy, and none of my Dover editions have fallen apart.

There is a company that more or less does this already--Dover.

They specialize in books that have been out of print for some years. They usually have a quite excellent selection, and their prices are almost always under $25. Most of their math or science books I've looked at at amazon tend to be 4-5 stars and 20-30% off list! It's really a cheap way to build an amazing library.

Their calculus section for example is quite extensive, and I see several undergrad textbooks. While the books are paperback, the paper is not thin and flimsy, and none of my Dover editions have fallen apart.

There is a company that more or less does this already--Dover.

They specialize in books that have been out of print for some years. They usually have a quite excellent selection, and their prices are almost always under $25. Most of their math or science books I've looked at at amazon tend to be 4-5 stars and 20-30% off list! It's really a cheap way to build an amazing library.

Their calculus section for example is quite extensive, and I see several undergrad textbooks. While the books are paperback, the paper is not thin and flimsy, and none of my Dover editions have fallen apart.

At my college, it was a dollars-for-points system. They didn't even adjust the points to some wierd scale to mask the ratio: $1.06 paid in advance on the meal plan was worth $1 of cafeteria food. Also, no refunds on remaining balances. What a ripoff! So, we found ways to balance the ledger: anything that could be eaten before stepping up to the cash register *was*. We'd guzzle 'Free' refills on soda. Or misidentify items to the clerk (Nah, I only ordered a medium).

To stay on topic, I haven't seen mention of Dover books. Had 3 times that a prof used a dover book ($8 instead of $65, one time). Also, Alibris.com is DA BOMB for used books. Getting last-year's edition can save you some money. Bookswaps: primo. A friend at a bigger University can sometimes find used texts cheaply (or get them on a full-semester checkout from their library!), if you're one of 6 students in a junior/senior class in something obscure. Back before the September that never ended, I even bought a book or two off Usenet.

Oh, and a particularly lame Pascal textbook (in the 1980's) that priced out at 16 cents a page? I photocopied it ALL, then took the book back for a refund. Strangely, doing this just once cured me of being cheap. For ten bucks, I learned, I could have a smaller form factor, a hard binding, and a 2nd color used for highlighting key details that the photocopies lost.

See? College teaches you all sorts of useful things. Only a few during class, though.

First, you need to do what you like to do. I think a warning about the tough times in computing is fair. However, the employment situation is much better for harder skills (i.e. CS versus IT, research level CS versus UML/OOP/J2EE). I think there's still plenty of room for highly educated and motivated people.

Actually I saw a program at Dartmouth for a dual MD and PhD in CS (odd combination, but definitely useful). You may also be interested in the field of computational biophysics. It's all of the same ilk.

The article poster said he was interested in CS. Are you interested in research or business? There are a lot of different routes you could take. Do you want to deal with biomedical engineers, biochemists, or lawyers? Frankly, you were way too broad.

Incidentally, for what ever it's worth. You may get a kick out of http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/kauffman/">Stuar t Kauffman's work. He's regarded as one of the best in the field of complexity research. He also has an MD and no PhD. He taught himself quite a bit.

Some good Math and CS books:

"The (New) Turing Omnibus: 66 Excursions in Computer Science" by A. K. Dewdney
This book is a great advanced introduction to all of the major topics of CS (except neural networks). This book has sections on Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Relational Algebra (database theory), viruses, operating systems, data structures, and more. This is a great book for you.

http://aduni.org/
This site has lectures from an entire CS curriculum online. It was an experimental program designed for people like you.

You'll need a good introductory book on programming. Since you're probably not worrying about polishing up your resume, and you seem to be more interested in learning, you should take a look at:
"The Little Schemer" or "The Little LISPer" by Daniel Friedman.

If you really want the traditional route, take a look at "Thinking in Java" by Bruce Eckel. It's free and most people recommend Java or C++ as a good first language.

If you're really daring, try the "Perl" book by Larry Wall or "Learning Perl" by Randall Schwartz. Although, I think Perl is a horrible first language to learn. It's way too exotic.

Take a look at "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" by W. Richard Stevens. It's a great book on the internals in Unix.

Learn assembly language, it's a poor man's computer architecture course. Try to make a small graphics program (draw some primitives [lines and circles]) with assembly. Of course, you can't do that in Windows (unless you call some Win32 libraries or are VERY good.

"First Order Logic" by Raymond Smullyan
This book essentially covers the mathematics of automated theorem proving. Armed only with this, I was able to read papers in the field. Some knowledge of basic logic (prepositional logic, maybe some slight familiarity with predicate logic) is required. I'd also recommend a whole lot of "mathematical maturity". I recommend any of Raymond Smullyan's books (technical and popular science) sight unseen. Even his thesis (Theory of Formal Systems) was pretty good.

Any book by Howard Whitley Eves or Robert R. Stoll
Both men wrote books on matrix theory (linear algebra and more) and set theory. Actually, both are top-notch textbook writers and many of their books are available from Dover Publications.

Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson (or by FRS [Fellow of the Royal Society] if it's really old) and Calculus by Michael Spivak

The first book is the closest thing to a competent Calculus for dummies. It's almost 100 years old and it's a classic. Incidentally Mr. Thompson was an engineer, not a mathematician. The second book is notoriously rigourous and is almost an introduction to analysis. I don't know if you really care about Calculus. You probably won't

This was some years ago, but I remember being jealous of foreign students that had been able to obtain either

• less expensive soft cover versions of texts, where only the hardcover was available in the U.S. (and, to add insult, was a poor-quality binding, I've got duct-tape over the book spine)
• classic expensive books reprinted without permission by some outfit in Taiwan

For books that were $100 this was a big deal.

Some students photocopied whole books, but the big pile of smudgable papers, hours spent getting flashed by strobes, wasn't worth the saved expense and convenience of a genuine book, IMHO.

BTW, I thoroughly recommend that people check out Dover books for inexpensive paperback reprintings of really classic works.

Browsing college bookstores and then buying the selections for the courses somewhere else certainly saves money. But here's what I do (speaking as a collector/reader/addict):

1) Dover books! Cheap books by the authors that count! Dover
See for example "Atomic Physics" by Max Born for $15!

2) The best place to look for books in a college bookstore is usually not on the shelves. There is often a place where they have discontinued or otherwise "unsellable" books, and you can pick them up for a song. I picked up a great stellar nucleosynthesis textbook for $3 once.

3) If you are looking for Tech-Oprah, most scientific societies (APS,ACM,IEEE,etc) have book reviews et. al. in their little magazines. These are brand new, so hence expensive. However, if you really need to know what good books are coming out in your field, they are there. Every once in a while, that $150 book is exactly the one you need...

Cheers,
krysith

Most Dover publications are available directly through Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

Most Dover publications are available directly through Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

• Become familiar with the major historical developments of sf
• Become familiar with the common themes in sf literature
• Become familiar with the common techniques of sf literature
• Become more critical readers of sf literature
• Learn about the sf publishing industry and culture

First and formost, if you want your kids to get a leg up in life, teach them to program little games. You are teaching them to think systematically through layers of abstraction, and teaching them to bring a creative vision to life in such a way that their labors can be enjoyed by other students... Your math and art department will thank you.

2nd, give them a scavenger hunt with maps of your city (and phone numbers in case a group / group leader gets lost). You wouldn't believe how many high - school kids haven't ventured out further than a block or two away from home.

Have them jot notes at a city-council meeting, and ask the council members afterwards about their experience. Have them go to a meeting of the district school board and interview them. OK, this isn't directly related to the handspring, but removing the mistique from the way a city is run is important for developing citizens.

Of course, get a good graphing calculator application for the math courses... Just not too good of one. You want a calculator that will let kids visualize the look of a graph, but not one that will let them plug in equasions and have the calc solve calculus for them.

English / english, english / spanish dictionaries. This will really depend upon the kind of RAM you will have available, but dictionaries will really help out the ESL kids. And you should consider having an all-spanish day of some sort, to make the english kids' brains work in a way they may not be accustomed to.

There is also Avant-Go, which is a free service that may not be terribly educational but will let your kids download and read specific sites like news.bbc.co.uk from their palms. Reading is never a bad thing. Speaking of which, a quick search will net you thousands of free classic books... It might save your english department a little bit of money to download and beam a copy of Romeo and Juliette or The Scarlett Letter, rather than buying paperback versions... though with the added advantage of letting kids highlight the heck out of their books a cheap dover thrift edition might be educationally sound.

And if you have already read down this far, palm boulevard is reporting that eSchool News just voted the palm the best OS for teaching. While I can't get through to the site to confirm details, I bet you could find some great ideas there.

Whatever you choose, remember to get very hard, very durable covers for these things. My girlfriend and I have a wall devoted to our broken palm pilots... with five up there and climbing, and we're not going to be any near as hard on these things as your kids will be. Good luck! I hope this helps. -chris

May I recomend Dover Publications?
They republish paperback versions of classics (Newton, Einstein, Fermi, etc...), as well as titles such as Problem Solving Through Recreational Mathematics , and 100 Great Problems of Elementary Mathematics. The beauty of Dover is their price. Many books are under $10.

Also recommended for self study are the Schaum's Outlines series from McGraw-Hill.