Yes, I think you are right. I offer a free Linear Algebra book that appears on the first page of a Google search. The book's approach is to give a lot of explanation and motivation, so I often get emails from folks about this topic. From students often the mails say something like, "I couldn't understand my prof but by using your book as a supplement .." while from the prof I get (much less often) "way too chatty."
So I agree that a lot of it is a question of culture and taste.
On my first day in grad school a prof who I admire a great deal told me what he liked best about Differential Equations is that you don't have to say how you found the answer. You just state the answer and verify it satisfies the equation. I think that's the taste of people who enter the field.
(I also think that is the taste of the moderators of MO, which is why questions like this have been closed over time.)
> what he liked best about Differential Equations is that you don't have to say how you found the answer. You just state the answer and verify it satisfies the equation.
Man, that is kind of magical from a productivity prospective.* The vast majority of my time is spent explaining why the answer I give is sensible and reasonable.
*The small cost of this approach is that all insight that led to him finding the solution will die with him.
Don't be. The first thing I did when reading your above comment was to do the Google search. I should have scrolled down!
I'm browsing through this, and it's clear to me this is a textbook. In that it easily looks like it could be the textbook of record for college courses. This is an enormous amount of work. Am I correct in assuming it grew out of your lectures notes? What lead you to make this a freely available textbook, instead of going the "normal" route of going through a publisher and getting royalties?
Yes, it is a text. As the linked-to page says, it has been used in hundreds of classes at many schools as well as by thousands of individuals for independent study.
> Am I correct in assuming it grew out of your lectures notes?
No, really I wrote it intentionally not organically. I used Strang's book in a course a couple of times and while that is a very fine book, the students I had in front of me had trouble with it (and anyway I wanted to cover a somewhat different set of topics). I looked around some more but basically I couldn't find a text that fit.
> What lead you to make this a freely available textbook, instead of going the "normal" route of going through a publisher and getting royalties?
I wrote it using LaTeX, on Linux, using emacs. It seemed natural.
I do get some money, from Amazon sales, because it would be stupid to not round the price up. (But in general, everyone tells you that unless you write a very popular text for a very big audience, you are not going to see much money. You need to get your pleasure from the creative accomplishment.)
Yes, I think you are right. I offer a free Linear Algebra book that appears on the first page of a Google search. The book's approach is to give a lot of explanation and motivation, so I often get emails from folks about this topic. From students often the mails say something like, "I couldn't understand my prof but by using your book as a supplement .." while from the prof I get (much less often) "way too chatty."
So I agree that a lot of it is a question of culture and taste.
On my first day in grad school a prof who I admire a great deal told me what he liked best about Differential Equations is that you don't have to say how you found the answer. You just state the answer and verify it satisfies the equation. I think that's the taste of people who enter the field.
(I also think that is the taste of the moderators of MO, which is why questions like this have been closed over time.)