Item — HN Reader

I disagree with you on the publishing front. Mathematics is fundamental and timeless (what do you mean "many of these titles are mostly of historical value"?) They may need some trivial editing (though i would much prefer that they be published as they were with a note explaining the historical aspects) but otherwise they were information dense and succinct with an eye to Applications. They were all excellent across the board. They were directly responsible for educating a lot of poor people in many countries due to their very low cost and affordability. I would say this was one of the biggest successes of the Soviet ideology i.e. the education of the masses in Science & Technology fields. Current day Russians/Eastern Europeans/Central Asians can justifiably be very proud of this part of their History.

Much of "modern" textbooks are full of excessive verbiage obscuring the essentials, "pretty printing" disguised as "easy comprehension" and a racket for the publishers to make money. Why in the world do i need so many editions of books containing Mathematics which has not changed in centuries? Why do they cost an arm and a leg? Education is as fundamental as Health services and both should be affordable in service of the population.

So again, somebody setup a publishing company (eg. Dover Publications) and bring ALL the forgotten books from the Soviet era back into print :-)

1 comments

> Mathematics is fundamental and timeless

Absolutely and you certainly have a point with what you wrote. May opinion is more along the lines of: "the content is still as valuable as it ever was but the presentation is not."

Take one of the examples I mentioned. Abramowitz and Stegun is a collection of mathematical tables. If you needed to calculate the sine of a value, would you rip out your chuffed copy of Abramowitz and Stegun or would you use your calculator? Even for the more obscure tables there is probably nothing in the book that isn't in Mathematica. If I really needed to look into the book for some reason I would be too lazy find my copy, given that online versions[1] as well as extended and improved versions[2] are just a few mouse clicks away.

Now, a book of mathematical tables is like an extreme example but I still feel the same sentiment for all my old math books. Why bother with a physical copy if I have a searchable online version right at my fingertips? When i comes to the books from the Soviet era I guess libgen has them all and I think most people would not buy a physical copy anyway.

[1] http://people.math.sfu.ca/~cbm/aands/intro.htm

[2] https://dlmf.nist.gov/

> but the presentation is not

You are very wrong here. It is the very presentation in those books viz; succinct and concise, no frills approach, high information density and with an eye to applications which makes them so valuable today. It is the best way of Science teaching distilled from the brains of a whole lot of smart people.

I am not sure why you are fixated on one book of tables. It is irrelevant in the broader scheme of things. For example none of the Mir books that i have, have anything to do with pre-calculated tables other than a few appendices.

There are a huge swath of students across the world who do not have the same access to technology as we do. Printed books are still the norm amongst the majority of students in the world. Printed books will also outlast any Digital media presentation of books due to its simplicity and robustness i.e no problems like DRM, unreadable extinct formats, availability of good ereaders, health aspects, etc (there is a whole lot more i can elaborate here).

Finally, and most important, research is beginning to show that we retain/understand less when using ebooks/ereaders than when we read a printed book. This is very much true of technical books (borne out by my own experience) where you need concentrated attention with body and mind. For example, we intuitively jump back and forth across pages, use our fingers as book marks, subconsciously create spatial maps of what we are reading etc. all of which have no analogues with current day ereaders. Cognitive Science is still trying to figure out how best to use modern technology. So don't throw away your old Maths books just yet :-)