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Comment by credo | Hacker News Reader

>>"A textbook author in Toronto made enough money from his calculus textbook to afford a $20 million house."

Let us see, many movie stars, many wall street bankers, many atheletes, many businessmen etc. make far bigger amounts of money.

...and Seth Godin has a problem with the author of one testbook making money

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I see this come up again and again on HN and this kind of logic keeps getting voted up:

"You're complaining about [lesser evil] when there is [bigger unrelated evil]. Therefore what you say is irrelevant."

Sometimes it takes on this flavor:

"You're worried about the well-being of [one person] when millions are starving every day. Therefore what you say is irrelevant."

Is there some sort of fallacy name for this? This kind of argument says nothing.

Red Herring: also called a "fallacy of relevance." This occurs when the speaker is trying to distract the audience by arguing some new topic, or just generally going off topic with an argument.

Except that it is difficult to take a class without buying the textbook, and they are expensive. When was the the last time your professor mandated that you see a certain sports team play, but base tickets cost $100?

The base tickets are far more than $100. You also need to factor in the cost of tuition, transportation to and from, and the opportunity cost of having classes take up your time.

Or, to put in another way, you are not mandated to attend a class where the professor will charge you to see a certain sports team play. Somewhere along the way, you made a choice that brought you to this mandate.

For a site promoting entreprenuers and innovation the attitude towards this textbook writer seems odd. At least he's contributing something to society to earn his wealth..

If my professor had mandated that I see a certain sports team play, I probably wouldn't have taken the class.

As a free-market type would say or as Stephen Covey would say, take responsibility for your decisions. If you don't like the mandates that come with a certain class, don't take that class.

Imagine this purely hypothetical situation for a minute: some classes are actually required for your major, and even though you are having exorbitant textbook prices extorted from you, it's still not enough to warrant quitting the major entirely.

Just because people can technically choose to avoid the situation entirely by dropping out or altering their life's course by switching majors doesn't justify ripping students off, or any other such small evils.

It's difficult to take a programming class without owning a computer and they are expensive too.

High fixed costs relating to an academic activity do not provide indicators to the ethics of the people who produce the required items.

Yes but the professor is not the only provider of the required computer.

Serious question: Is it common for professors to require the purchase of their own titles for a class?

Just because there are greater "evils" out there doesn't excuse lesser ones.

It's calculus, which, as invariably gets pointed out in discussions about overpriced textbooks, hasn't changed much in the last century. How much value does that textbook actually bring over other calculus textbooks? Enough to justify a $20 million house? Does it present new and exciting ways to look at calculus? Does it make it that much easier for students to absorb and understand the material? Or is it successful mainly because of political skill inside a cartel-like industry?

Lot's of shitty books of all kinds sell because of good marketing. It wouldn't be a phenomenon exclusive to textbooks.

That said, there are huge differences among calculus textbooks. I don't know the one mentioned here, but when I studied, there was a choice between a very concise and condensed one, and a very drawn out and long one. The latter would have bored me to death. It is not easy to present maths in a short and concise way.

this is the author in question - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stewart_(mathematician) .. his book was actually pretty good and I could use it for about 3 classes in my calc sequence.. pretty good value for money

I remember Stewart's Calculus as a reasonably good textbook. Though they seemed to publish a new edition every two years. Chapter and problem set numbers would get shuffled around, and so you needed the newest edition in order to do assigned homework.

How much has undergraduate level calculus really changed in the last 200 years? The constant updates disrupted the used textbook market and drove sales of new books.

Well, I can't give you 200 years with 10 seconds on Google, but how does 102 years sound?

http://www.archive.org/details/differentialinte00osborich

You'd have to come to your own conclusions on the differences though, analyzing math books can take a while. :) The form is quite different.

(I searched "project gutenberg calculus" with no quotes and that was hit #1. The second result appears to come from 1865, so maybe I should have spent just a bit longer with that page.)

Hm, my profs used that textbook, but they were fairly careful not to use questions from it for graded homework. This let you use old versions for studying, without an impact on your grades.

Slideshow of the house here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123872378357585295.html#arti...

Quite nice, I think. And tasteful.

If it's gonna be someone, he's not a bad candidate for it - his Calculus books are high-quality textbook that age nicely.

Yes, but nobody forces you to watch a sport or go to a certain business.

Textbooks are required for college classes.

and nobody forces you to attend any particular class either. You're always free to drop out.

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