No bullshit guide to math and physics, v4.0 | Hacker News Reader

No bullshit guide to math and physics, v4.0

minireference.com

29 pointsivansavz11 comments

Maybe I'm cynical (or not cynical enough) but I always tend to cast a wary eye at product marketed like this:

>You don't need to read thousands of pages to learn mechanics and calculus, so why are the required textbooks so long? Textbook publishers produce such large textbooks so they can charge you $150 for each textbook. They want to get $300 from you to teach you the basics. That's not cool!

It comes off the same way as infomercials for "One health secret that doctors don't want you to know!".

I know what you mean, but in this case there is a real "cartel" thing going on. Professors decide what book will be used for the class and students have to buy it regardless of price and quality.

Imagine you were a publisher and you have a captive audience of hundreds of thousands of students. Would you make a good lean book and sell it for $30, or would you make a bloated book with full-page color images and repetitive explanations? Assume in both cases, the sale is guaranteed...

That's the "injustice" I'm trying to fix, but it is a bit of an uphill battle because first-year students assume that the bigger (thicker) books must be better because they have "more stuff" in them.

>Assume in both cases, the sale is guaranteed... That seems like an invalid assumption. The publisher doesn't choose which book the students buy, the professor does. And its not like theres a publisher with a pure monopoly on mathematics textbooks, so there is a market and choice avaialble. We can of course question whether the professors are choosing the best textbooks, but in general, unless they're trying to boost sales of their own books, they're not choosing books based on increased cost.

>That's the "injustice" I'm trying to fix, but it is a bit of an uphill battle because first-year students assume that the bigger (thicker) books must be better because they have "more stuff" in them.

Well, what first-year students think should be irrelevant, shouldn't it, because as you stated, the students have to buy whatever they're told.

Its not to say that I think your book is bad or anything (I haven't read it, I can't comment) I just thought that I'd mention this as criticism since at least for me it automatically causes me to think of your book as a gimmick and lower quality than it probably is.

I get where this thought comes from, but I have to say that I have this book (though I used mostly version 3) and it has been a lifesaver. I love it and highly recommend it to anyone learning first year calc at uni.

Author here.

I've been working on a lot of things (exercises, phys.js simulations, new free tutorials) and planning a bit launch, but now I realize that the fall semester is almost over so I decided to launch v4.0 ASAP.

Maybe my book will help some students who are freaking out about their upcoming calculus and mechanics finals!

I've been waiting for v4 for a while now. Looks great! I think I'll finally buy it. :)

The PDF preview at https://gumroad.com/l/noBSmath appears to be the old version of the book. You should fix that.

The link is actually the same as for v3.0---I just replaced the file with the new one. So if have the gumroad link to the v3.0 file, it should now point to the updated version.

Congrats to Ivan and team, this update reflects many months of work and a lot of improvements. Hope many students who are trying to learn a semester's worth of calculus in just the next few weeks can benefit from this update.

Why is this here and why is it getting upvoted? All I see is a sales page with no real content on it. Maybe the guide isn't bullshit but this submission is.

Hi,

Actually there is content-a-plenty. The preview contains one third of the book (the first few chapters), and I have some nice FREE tutorials on mechanics and linear algebra which might help out students:

http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/miniref/miniref_v4_preview.pdf

http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/miniref/mech_in_7_pages.pdf

http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/miniref/linear_algebra_in_3_pages...

But, yes, it is a "launch page" in a way.... but I think my "product" is genuinely interesting for hackers and students who were busy hacking all semester long and now have exams coming their way ;)

I am really glad this was posted here and plan to pick up a copy.

People post landing pages on HN all of the time, I'm not sure how this is any different.

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