Ever have a basic class with a prof who wrote their own book?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Just got the book for my Calc I class from the bookstore. It’s actually not a book, but about 400 pages printed on loose-leaf, which means I’ll need to get a 3-ring binder to stash it in. (I hate those things. The rings always get misaligned after a couple months. Spiral notebooks FTW.) The book is written by the prof, and includes the name of the college on the cover and an introductory note to students of our college, leading me to believe that it’s not actually a published textbook.

Looking through it, it looks fine, I just wonder why he didn’t bother with one of the many excellent and widely-reviewed calculus books out there. Basic calculus is not exactly a controversial or frequently-changing subject. It must be a lot of work to put something like this together. I’m a little nervous that this guy might turn out to be some kinda self-obsessed weirdo.

At least it wasn’t very expensive, compared to normal books. I wonder how much money he’s actually making from it. It can’t be a huge amount, since I don’t think he’s selling it anywhere but our own school.

2

He might be a self obsessed weirdo, or he may not like any of the other textbooks out there or he might be trying to save his students some cash. Hard to tell.

I had a similar teacher made book for Biochemistry once. The teacher couldn’t see asking us to pay $100+ for a book, he wasn’t really wowed by anything else out there, and it wasn’t too hard for him to assemble 100 pages of the notes he’d made for students over 20 years of teaching and get 'em run off at Kinko’s. He also had them bind them into one of those spiral bindings, which was awesome. I love me a book that will lie flat without me holding it! :smiley:

He didn’t have them at the bookstore, just asked us for the $15 or whatever it was each one cost him at the copy shop and handed them out in class. He was pretty darn cool.

3

Some professors who write their own books prefer to teach from these books not just because they make a little money, but also because the book is laid out exactly the way that the prof wants to teach the class. Sounds like the latter.

4

My Psychology 101 professor wrote the textbook for the class, which he taught. He mapped out his semesters so the entire text was covered.

Later, I worked for him as his assistant, and got an acknowlegement in the next edition of the book.

5

I think you should be glad that you have a professor who takes teaching seriously.

The topic itself may be well established, but some people have strong opinions about the best way to teach it. My father is into this stuff - he goes to conferences where they discuss different ways to teach math. Like what’s the best way to introduce the concept of negative numbers & how best to explain why multiplying two negative numbers gives you a positive number, etc.

I’ve had two undergrad courses taught by the author of the textbook. Those were two of my best courses in college - probably because the professors have taken the time to think about the best ways to explain that topic. I still have those two textbooks right here in my office.

6

Might be straining the OPs def of basic, but thermodynamics in college was a nightmare for me.

The Prof was writing his own book on thermo. Now, he hadn’t finished the book. A kind reading would put it at maybe 40% complete. The basic skeleton was there, but with no editing, no example problems, and no supporting examples of why we should give a damn.

I’m talking a PDF that read like this:

*Gibbs Free Energy (G) is defined as: G(p,T) = U + pV − TS
*

Period. No examples, no background why this mattered. Lectures were literally just "This is how internal energy is defined: writes equation on board. This is how entropy is defined: writes equation on board. No context, no “this is how you use these concepts” just basic definitions.

Then we’d get to the midterm exam:

Derive the Gibbs Free Energy starting from the ideal gas law

:confused:

:eek:

Didn’t help that the prof had a mean streak. Never struck him that his classes were in an engineering curriculum, and that budding young engineers tend to do better when shown how abstract concepts are much easier to comprehend when they are applied to actual, physical situations and reactions.

He was a bastard. I blundered through about a third of his course before having to drop it because I was failing. Thankfully I pulled a much more reasonable professor the next semester and passed just fine. THEN I pulled him again for thermo 2. Another nightmare. Another class dropped, then redone the next semester with another professor who actually used a complete textbook.

Gah, this is probably my greatest academic regret in college. What kills me is that both times, when I got a professor who actually was willing to use an established text - one that actually gave a bit of info on why we should give a damn, and one that showed us how these extremely abstract ideas applied to chemical reactions - I did fine. If I could go back in time and do it over I would have just have bought a proper and complete textbook on Thermodynamics and studied that rather than the asshole’s half-complete PDF. As it was, I felt stupid and a failure.

7

The entire English department at my one school used books compiled by them.

My Photoshop teacher also wrote the book we used–but she’d published it, with a fairly well-known company. I was actually quite surprised that someone teaching at a community college in Arkansas would have that much clout.

8

I was very proud of myself this summer, when while reviewing all the algebra I had forgotten, I successfully derived the quadratic formula from the general form of a quadratic equation. Now I don’t have to remember it. :cool:

9

I had at least 5 of those at Pitt circa 1975-80. One came right out and told us it was so he could generate more income for himself.

Be glad though - I had one who did something I considered even shittier - the textbook he wrote and that was required reading was seven years out of print. You either had to pay rare book prices to someone for it or read it at the library. And this was a class of roughly 200 people. I would have to hit the library as soon as they opened to have even a hope of getting to it.

10

As a Math prof, my first guess is that he doesn’t want you all to have to spend $200 on a Calculus book. Most of my colleagues hate it, and I want to publish my own free (I would just make it a free pdf) Calc book. May I ask how much it cost you?

FTR, it’s probably laid out the exact same as myriad other Calc books, and he’s probably making little or no money on it.

11

I’ve had two upper division math courses with professor-written texts. Plastic covers, spiral bound. Cheaper than any other books those semesters. Axiomatic Geometry was probably the closer to “basic” of the two; the other was Discrete Optimization.

12

My biochem profs did write the books used. The lab book was a commercially published book, so we used that. The in-class books weren’t published yet, so we had a self published version. Both were fantastic. They got no money for the self-publish and about $1 per published version, one prof said.
My physics prof also self-pub’ed our books - they were fab.

13

But to answer the question in the OP:

I took Ancient Philosophy where we read Plato, Aristotle, and some Pre-Socratics. The Plato and Aristotle were the usual paperbacks, but the Pre-Socratics were the prof’s own translation, and so were in a binder we got cheap from the university’s copy-shop.

Similarly, I had a Logic text that was a cheap binder at the copy-shop. Except these were the lecture notes of the guy who taught it a couple of years before. Our guy was just following along!

14

This is very similar to what my Adolescent Psychology professor did. The text was very succinct and covered exactly what he taught in class.

15

I took a Russian History class where the prof wrote a small supplement that was about $10. More along the lines of what you are talking about. That was fine as it was pretty helpful.

Then in my first Econ class, our prof made us buy three books that he wrote at $30a pop. I know why he made us buy them. No one else would have written a book with the horseshit theories that he espoused. And he made a few bucks off it as well.

16

I should add that I still have this book, and used it as a resource when I taught Logic (the kind you teach to math majors, that is) myself.

17

I actually have that book (from way back when I did AP calc in high school a billionty years ago.) I don’t remember it being that expensive back then, though. I actually like that book, although I like Ron Larson’s more because it’s better designed.

This loose-leaf volume cost me $65.

18

It’s happened to me a couple of times, one good and one bad.

The first was in undergrad, my EE 101 (I’m guessing it was 101) class, “Circuits.” My prof wrote the book that all sections of the class used, and it was terrible. Both the book and the prof. One of the benefits of having a book and a lecture is that if the style of one isn’t working for you, at least you have the other to turn to…except in this case. His lectures were basically just truncated chapters of the book. So if you were having trouble with something in class, you couldn’t turn to the book for help. And it was very sparse. Very few example problems, and not very clear explanations. He was a whiz at circuit analysis (you know, where you get a schematic full of resistors, capacitors, inductors and the like and are asked to find the voltage/resistance.whatever at X point) so he couldn’t understand why we all had problems with it.

What I remember most is during a session on op-amps, my partner and I couldn’t figure out the in-class assignment, so we called him over for help. We asked him about how such and such worked, and his answer was:
“Just use the virtual short!”

Now, we KNEW that there was a virtual short in the operation of op-amps, but we weren’t stuck there, but that’s all he would give for an answer, because for him, it was so obvious that that’s all anyone needed for an answer. Ugh, that class and it’s sequel (same prof) are what made me switch from a EE.

The other time was in grad school in a class on finite element analysis. The “book” was like what a lot of others described, just detailed typed out notes from the prof that we put in a 3-ring binder. But unlike last time, these were good! Very in-depth, but not getting too far into the derivations and whatnot that we didn’t need to know. I had a finite elements class in my undergrad days that I barely squeaked a D out of, and this time around, despite it being more involved material, I somehow pulled an A out of my ass. :smiley:

19

You don’t mean it’s literally printed on loose leaf paperinstead of copy paper, do you? I can’t imagine that’d hold up for even one reading.

I can’t recall any professors making us read their books, but tons would send us to the copy shop to spent $50 on some supplemental materials they had printed and bound.

20

Handbook to the Orders and Families of Living Mammals

I found it to be a great text, especially the illustrations. That was back when I was entertaining thoughts of vet school or scientific illustration as career paths. Ah to be young again…