

No bullshit guide to math and physics, v4.0 - ivan_ah
http://minireference.com/launch40

======
gms7777
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!".

~~~
ivan_ah
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.

~~~
gms7777
>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.

------
ivan_ah
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!

------
faviouz
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](https://gumroad.com/l/noBSmath) appears to be
the old version of the book. You should fix that.

~~~
ivan_ah
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.

------
dergachev
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.

------
dataminded
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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shmageggy
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.

~~~
ivan_ah
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/miniref_v4_preview.pdf)

[http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/miniref/mech_in_7_pages.pdf](http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/miniref/mech_in_7_pages.pdf)

[http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/miniref/linear_algebra_in_3_pages...](http://cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/miniref/linear_algebra_in_3_pages.pdf)

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 ;)

