tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post4589067189308524430..comments2024-03-18T22:18:20.292-05:00Comments on Computational Complexity: The Sheldon Conjecture (too late for Problems with a Point)Lance Fortnowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06752030912874378610noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-16753730200173203922019-10-15T07:50:47.328-05:002019-10-15T07:50:47.328-05:00I differ with Abigail a bit. I offer a few Free bo...I differ with Abigail a bit. I offer a few Free books, one of them reasonably popular, and I've exchanged hundreds of emails with students and instructors about them over the years. Books are different than software. With software, if you fix a bug in a subroutine then nobody has to see it. If you add a new flag then the old flags continue to work. But with a book people see everything (apart from makefile-type stuff).<br /><br />For example, if people are going to use it in a classroom then they want that everyone in the room has the same content, in the same sections on the same pages, matching the same answers (if you offer an answer book). Instructors don't want to hear that half the class got a corrected version of the Jordan Form theorem, in part because that means that half of the class did not. <br /><br />Also, in my experience they want a paper version, which means periodically freezing at a version since students want to buy it from Amazon or from their school's bookstore.<br /><br />I don't even intermittently update the git repo, because I've heard from instructors about assigning questions 1-15 odd on page 95 and then having some people say they don't have any questions on that page. The instructor finds out that those folks downloaded an updated version and then is annoyed.<br /><br />Perhaps it is not logical of the instructor to be annoyed. But they are.Jim Hefferonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09292836035665054384noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-73441062102138400772019-10-14T11:07:01.268-05:002019-10-14T11:07:01.268-05:00AH-so e-books which are easily updated but also ha...AH-so e-books which are easily updated but also have a more refined numbering system then Edition 2, Edition 3, etc.<br />That could work!GASARCHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03615736448441925334noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-31224482506729400842019-10-14T11:02:51.448-05:002019-10-14T11:02:51.448-05:00Isn't the idea of a book which is modified/upd...Isn't the idea of a book which is modified/updated all the time similar to what happens with (open source) software? Bugs get fixed, and features added (and sometimes removed). New releases are published at regular times, and in some cases, any change is immediately available, made easy with services like Github.<br /><br />Points 4) and 6) are addressed with version numbers. Often of the from X.Y.Z where a change in X indicates a major change, a change in Y a minor change, and a change in Z a tiny patch. Referring to software doesn't always require version numbers ("Java has object"); you'd only need them if referring to something which appears from a certain version onwards ("Perl 5 has objects" (just a major number) or "Bug XYZ got fixed in kernel version 5.3.6" (all components of the version)) Abigailhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14202894297731782841noreply@blogger.com