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What a Difference 30 Years Makes! Adventures in Mathematics Textbook Publishing Ken Levasseur Mathematical Sciences University of Massachusetts Lowell Google: Applied Discrete Structures
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Applied Discrete Structures for Computer Science by Al Doerr and Ken Levasseur 1 st Edition, 1984 SRA 2 nd Edition, 1989 SRA Macmillan 1 st Edition: written on a Wang Word Processor 2 nd Edition: OCR of 1 st Ed and edited with Word and MathType SRA : “no TeX” Features included Pascal and Ada “notes” No internet or computer algebra system By 2010: out of print for years, copyright held by Pearson, but it had been moderately successful while in print.
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Contents Available in separately or together in pdf or hard copy (lulu.com) Part 1 Chapter 1: Set Theory I Chapter 2: Combinatorics Chapter 3: Logic Chapter 4: More on Sets Chapter 5: Introduction to Matrix Algebra Chapter 6: Relations and Graphs Chapter 7: Functions Chapter 8: Recursion and Recurrence Relations Chapter 9: Graph Theory Chapter 10: Trees Part 2 Chapter 11: Algebraic Systems Chapter 12: More Matrix Algebra Chapter 13: Boolean Algebra Chapter 14: Monoids and Automata Chapter 15: Group Theory and Applications Chapter 16: An Introduction to Rings and Fields
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Genesis of our current project Sage Education Day, Cambridge 2009, Rob Beezer and others talking about open content textbooks. Al Doerr and I agreed to track down the copyright holder, Pearson and ask for the rights. They granted it, no questions asked! One condition: Include “Formally published as…” on title page. We then decided to solve our students’ $150 textbook problem.
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Conversion to Applied Discrete Structures Scan pages of 1989 edition o Text: Reasonable accuracy o Notation: Terrible o Figures: Poor Import into Mathematica o Lots of editing - some student help o Replace Pascal and Ada with Mathematica and Sage. o Upload.nb and.pdf files to wiki. Student assistants: first pass, fixing obvious problems
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Supplementary Materials Original editions: Instructors’ Manual only. Creative Commons Edition o Wiki o Videos o Mathematica and Sage Demonstrations o Blog Under consideration o WeBWork collection
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Getting the word out 12 month span – top external sources of hits to our site. 510 Hits: aimath.org/textbooks/ (American Institute of Mathematics) 235 Hits: sagemath.org/library-publications.html 459 Hits: google.com/ (Searchs such as “Applied Discrete Structures”) 184 Hits: buzzard.ups.edu/courses (Rob Beezer) 93 Hits: collegeopentextbooks.org 39 Hits: Merlot.org
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Outside Adoptions Winter/Spring 2014 –Grand Valley State University Fall 2013 –Casper College (WY) –UMass Dartmouth –Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania –Wright College (IL) - City Colleges of Chicago –Valencia College (FL) –Whittier College (CA) Spring 2013 –Grinnell College (IA) –Luzurne Community College (PA) –University of the Puget Sound (WA)
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Economic Impact: at least $36,500 in 2013 At UMass Lowell $22,500 157 students Previous Text: $150 Roughly 10% buy the Lulu version for $30 External Users $14,000 Very conservative estimate based on partial information from survey on LimeService.com Some courses are hidden behind systems like Blackboard
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