Saylor offers millions of dollars in bounties for open textbooks

Re:Saylor offers millions of dollars in bounties for open t... by plinkplonk on Friday September 09, 2011 @03:46AM (#2977302)

Linear Algebra seems to be missing in the mathematics section of the list of eligible courses. I'd have thought it would be pretty fundamental. Hefferon's text is under the GPL and might be eligible.

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Re:Saylor offers millions of dollars in bounties for open t... by wedesoft on Friday September 09, 2011 @06:43AM (#2977615)

I can recommend the Samizdat website [1]. They have a very good linear algebra book as well.

[1] http://samizdat.mines.edu/

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Re:Saylor offers millions of dollars in bounties for open t... by wwwwrrrr on Friday September 09, 2011 @07:35AM (#2977695)

This really shows the problem with this model. Textbook publishers have been very successful at attracting the top authorities in their respective fields to write the textbook. Sure, anyone can rehash what's already written in any other textbook. But can Saylor get someone like Halmos or Axler to write their linear algebra textbook?

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Re:Saylor offers millions of dollars in bounties for open t... by ig1 on Friday September 09, 2011 @09:00AM (#2977925)

Just because you're the top authority in the field it doesn't mean you're good at teaching it. Writing effective textbooks is a skill in it's own right.

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