Are all math professors conceited bigots?

[Proton Soup]

oh, and i guess i should say that regarding math professors, most of mine seemed to be fine decent folk. if they were conceited bigots, it was well-hid.

 

[kodiakghost]

I can't be sure or anything, but I'd take a wild guess that the folks defending a professor using his/her own book just happen to be professors that wrote their own books =)

 

[CaptainQuasar]

I can't be sure or anything, but I'd take a wild guess that the folks defending a professor using his/her own book just happen to be professors that wrote their own books =)

No! You don't say? Perish the thought. It certainly didn't occur to me at all during that dialogue.

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[Hurkyl]

I can't be sure or anything, but I'd take a wild guess that the folks defending a professor using his/her own book just happen to be professors that wrote their own books =)

At least you admit it's a wild guess. As such, I wonder why you bothered posting it? Trolling, perhaps?

 

[Hootenanny]

I can't be sure or anything, but I'd take a wild guess that the folks defending a professor using his/her own book just happen to be professors that wrote their own books =)

Nope, I have never written a textbook - nor do I lecture.

You have also yet to respond to the comments which I made https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=1958655&postcount=53", or anyone else's comments for that matter.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Hootenanny asked questions to kodiakghost unrelated to the moral hazard points I've been posing (I do think you ought to respond to him somehow on those, k.g.), but another example occurred to me on that note: if you found out that a primary school teacher in your locality had persuaded the school administration to buy his own textbook for classes, and that was the only place the book had sold, wouldn't that be rather suspicious? (This hypothetical situation probably has more the sort of effect I want it to in places where education is locally funded and you'd fairly directly be paying for the books in local tax dollars.)

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[Hootenanny]

but another example occurred to me on that note: if you found out that a primary school teacher in your locality had persuaded the school administration to buy his own textbook for classes, and that was the only place the book had sold, wouldn't that be rather suspicious? (This hypothetical situation probably has more the sort of effect I want it to in places where education is locally funded and you'd fairly directly be paying for the books in local tax dollars.)

I would be immediately suspicious simply because a school teacher was using his own texts in class, even if the text wasn't on general sale. Of course if the text was poorly written, then I would most definitely have objections.

As cristo said before, I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with a teacher using their own texts, in fact I would be more suspicious if a teacher wasn't using his own text - what kind of message does that send about his confidence in his own abilities?

 

[CaptainQuasar]

I would be immediately suspicious simply because a school teacher was using his own texts in class, even if the text wasn't on general sale. Of course if the text was poorly written, then I would most definitely have objections.

So why would you be suspicious and why would the source of that suspicion not apply to a professor?

As cristo said before, I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with a teacher using their own texts, in fact I would be more suspicious if a teacher wasn't using his own text - what kind of message does that send about his confidence in his own abilities?

It would mean that he knows that being an expert in his subject is not the same thing as being a good textbook author.

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[Hootenanny]

So why would you be suspicious and why would the source of that suspicion not apply to a professor?

Sorry, major typo there! I meant to say that "I would not be immediately..."

It would mean that he knows that being an expert in his subject is not the same thing as being a good textbook author.

Good point. However, I would think that generally good teachers make good textbook authors.

 

[NeoDevin]

I've had a few profs who used their own notes for the course (both math and physics). Some sold bound copies for fairly cheap, some simply posted them online and made them available for free to everyone. These were some of the most informative courses I've taken, for the simple fact that the `text' follows exactly the course material. I had one course where the prof used a text written by a friend of his, and it was pretty good.

In every course I've taken which has a textbook assigned, the text was available for loan from the university library, usually several copies, so the argument that you're forced to buy a text for a class is ridiculous. For a couple of my classes, I glanced over the textbook and decided it wasn't worth purchasing (I didn't think that I would get any use out of it after the course was done), so I simply borrowed it from the library and photocopied the relevant problem sets.

In every course I've ever taken, whether or not we were using the prof's notes, their friend's text, or someone else's text (I've never actually had a prof use a text they've written) the prof gave a list of `supplemental material', most of which was available, free of charge, at the library (if your prof doesn't do this, I would recommend asking for such a list). So we have the situation:
course notes: cheap or free
instructor's text: free from library
any other text used for a course: free from library

(Hence my earlier comment: "You don't know how to use a library?")

Sorry, the argument that you're forced to buy a substandard text doesn't hold water. Further, since the instructors notes are geared specifically for the course, they are often better (especially to study from) than a text written by another prof.

Edit: Also, I have had a few profs who used a terrible book when they didn't have a vested interest in the book's sale.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

LOL I had an equally major typo there, more major than yours in the cosmetic sense!

I certainly grant that there's some overlap between good teachers and good textbook authors. The thing is that many college professors aren't very good teachers at all. When I was in college I had a 100% success rate guessing which professors had also taught high school. There are little pedagogical behaviors that help to indicate whether someone's had to teach in a more, er, demanding environment, which almost none of the college-only professors I've seen at several different institutions of higher learning manifest.

For full disclosure, although I've never been employed as a high school teacher myself I got a sort of minor in Education with my undergrad degree.

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[CaptainQuasar]

Sorry, the argument that you're forced to buy a substandard text doesn't hold water.

If you really have taken many courses where it's really feasible to get along without using the assigned text (in some of my courses it was actually called the "required text") then I guess we've just had very different experiences, possibly by being in different locations. For my classes sometimes there were some copies of the assigned text in the library but never anywhere near as many as there were students in the class. (Believe me, I looked; I paid full tuition out of my own pocket at a private college and saved money any way I could.)

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[NeoDevin]

I certainly grant that there's some overlap between good teachers and good textbook authors. The thing is that many college professors aren't very good teachers at all.

Yes, good teachers will probably have written a good text (if they wrote one at all). Good teachers, if they choose to use someone else's text, will often choose a good text. Bad teachers will probably have written a bad text, but they will probably choose a bad text for the course anyways. The only time I've had a bad prof choose a good text was for electrodynamics II, but since we used griffiths in ED I, there wasn't much choice.

 

[NeoDevin]

If you really have taken many courses where it's really feasible to get along without using the assigned text (in some of my courses it was actually called the "required text") then I guess we've just had very different experiences, possibly by being in different locations. For my classes sometimes there were some copies of the assigned text in the library but never anywhere near as many as there were students in the class. (Believe me, I looked; I paid full tuition out of my own pocket at a private college and saved money any way I could.)

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I have only purchased textbooks where I thought I would use them again someday (I also payed tuition myself, though at a Canadian public university). If memory serves I had 3 courses where I didn't purchase the assigned text (3rd year mathematical methods, 2nd year error analysis book for labs, and 2nd year intro modern phys). For modern phys I borrowed the text from someone who took it the previous year, the error analysis one I didn't miss anything by not having, but the mathematical methods I just used the library copy whenever I needed it. I photocopied the problem sets, and wrote notes out of the book for any sections I needed material in addition to the in-class notes. If the text is substandard, then purchase a better text on the subject, and use the library copy only for problem sets (do it as soon as they are assigned, so you're not fighting with the other students for limited copies). In my mathematical methods class, I think only 3 students in the class (out of 24) purchased the text. There were 2 copies in the library, but we all managed.

Between second hand copies, library copies, and borrowing from people who bought it the previous year, purchasing an expensive new copy is (almost) never required. Maybe the only time it would be required would be for a first edition text, in a large class (50-100+ students), and the library has only a couple of copies.

If the text is no good, you're better off purchasing a different one anyways. If problem sets are taken from the text, it doesn't take long to photocopy them from the library copy or a friend's copy. It is a little extra work, but it saves the cost of the text.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Class size might be part of it, where I was classes were never larger than thirty students max, per school policy. So we also had a relatively small library. Although I didn't live on campus, I commuted, so I did a lot of studying at home and getting to the library was difficult sometimes.

In any case, if the professor is both the person deciding which textbook is best and the person who wrote the text that just happened to be chosen, it seems to me that there's no question that's a conflict of interest. And the quality of textbooks in the classes I took where the professor had written the text seemed to bear it out.

If working without the assigned text is easy on the student's part so is avoiding the appearance of impropriety on the professor's part. I don't think that's too much to ask in an industry where students are frequently paying in excess of a hundred thousand US$ for their education (though public universities are often much less than that.)

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[NeoDevin]

If working without the assigned text is easy on the student's part so is avoiding the appearance of impropriety on the professor's part. I don't think that's too much to ask in an industry where students are frequently paying in excess of a hundred thousand US$ for their education (though public universities are often much less than that.)

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The only problem with that is sometimes the prof's text has been written by taking his notes from the very course he's teaching. There is often no other text which covers all the topics they want to cover in the course. Except for the basics (ED, QM, CM, Rel) which have pretty standard content from one institution to another, classes like photonics, nuclear, particle, condensed matter, and continuum, each prof at each institution will want to cover a different set of topics (generally I think they have certain ones required by the department, and discretion on anything beyond that). Any text they choose, other than their own, will probably leave out some of the topics they feel are important, and want to cover, and include other topics. Which means that any text other than their own, will suit better as supplemental, rather than main. So in many cases, it's not easy to avoid (what you call) the appearance of impropriety, and still cover the topics they want to cover.

 

[cristo]

I can't be sure or anything, but I'd take a wild guess that the folks defending a professor using his/her own book just happen to be professors that wrote their own books =)

Thanks, I take that as a compliment. Though, if it were true, I'd most definitely be one of the youngest professors in the world, let alone one with a textbook in his list of publications!

 

[CaptainQuasar]

The only problem with that is sometimes the prof's text has been written by taking his notes from the very course he's teaching. There is often no other text which covers all the topics they want to cover in the course. Except for the basics (ED, QM, CM, Rel) which have pretty standard content from one institution to another, classes like photonics, nuclear, particle, condensed matter, and continuum, each prof at each institution will want to cover a different set of topics (generally I think they have certain ones required by the department, and discretion on anything beyond that). Any text they choose, other than their own, will probably leave out some of the topics they feel are important, and want to cover, and include other topics. Which means that any text other than their own, will suit better as supplemental, rather than main. So in many cases, it's not easy to avoid (what you call) the appearance of impropriety, and still cover the topics they want to cover.

I am skeptical. I would certainly defer to you guys on physics topics (which, especially develop faster than the math and computer science I majored in), but having done student teaching myself at the high school level, where teachers had a considerably higher output of their own course materials, and just from having seen professors who informally assembled little booklets or used standardized texts and everything worked out just fine... I mean there have been so many textbooks written in English all over the world and a large percentage of those are in the public domain at this point. I have difficulty believing, even with the rare professor who is a very good teacher, that a course is really enhanced that much by having the text be completely custom-made and exclusively licensed to the professor teaching the course. And that goes for pretty much for all the courses I took myself.

It might require a little more elbow grease to assemble something from existing sources or create a small supplement to a standardized text and tailor your teaching to be in tune with the text, but if high school teachers can do that for six or seven back-to-back classes a day and then go coach the football team or produce plays with the theatre society I have difficulty having much sympathy for the professor of an august institution I dropped a hundred grand at who frequently has a lighter course load. And both of them get the summer off, frequently.

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[NeoDevin]

If the main text is custom made, you can always refer the students to other texts for additional reading. It just means that the one text covers exactly what is covered in the course. This is almost always better than having to refer to a number of different texts just to find the material.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

If the main text is custom made, you can always refer the students to other texts for additional reading. It just means that the one text covers exactly what is covered in the course. This is almost always better than having to refer to a number of different texts just to find the material.

Waiiit just a second - before you were saying how easy it was to go to the library and consult the various books there!

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[NeoDevin]

Yes, it is easy to consult various books. But it is still better to have the course covered completely in one book.

 

[NeoDevin]

Also, so you know where I'm coming from, my experience with math courses is limited to the basics: the entire calc/analysis stream, ODE's, PDE's, linear algebra stream, intro group theory, intro ring theory. Most of the calc stream was actually done from prof's notes, which were comparable to, or better than (for the first year course, much better than) any of the textbooks I've read on the subjects. I don't have any experience with the more obscure math courses where the material may not be adequately covered by a textbook, and may not be standard from one institution to the next.

 

[Proton Soup]

that reminds me. once had an english teacher that took fair use to mean you could copy a chapter from a book. he copied one chapter from several books to make one complete book that he distributed through Kinko's. turned out to be the only english teacher worth a darn, too. go figure.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

I don't have any experience with the more obscure math courses where the material may not be adequately covered by a textbook, and may not be standard from one institution to the next.

I certainly think that for really obscure stuff like that it might make sense for the whole course to be based on the professor's book. All the other topics, though, have more than a hundred years' worth of textbooks out there devoted to them so I have a hard time with the idea of professors putting their notes into a book and charging people for it who are already paying a substantial figure to be taught by them.

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[NeoDevin]

Here's an example of my first year honours calc text: http://www.math.uAlberta.ca/~bowman/m117/m117.pdf

Though it has been updated since I took the course.

Edit: I found it much easier to read and follow than Stewart's, or any other intro calculus text I have seen (a few, but I don't remember the names off hand). I still refer to it on occasion if I forget something basic (the hyperlinked table of contents is much better than flipping through books).

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Honors, huh? You are quite possibly smarter than me, if you're looking for me to say that for some reason. I was by no means an honor student. And the school I attended was a liberal arts college if that makes you feel better, though the math department was fairly heavy duty.

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[NeoDevin]

No, I wasn't looking for that, I was just mentioning that to differentiate it from the general calculus stream. It's the more proof/theory based course (as in, we proved much of the course on assignments). Honours refers to the level of the course, rather than the mark I got in it (perfect score, if you're interested).

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Another thing is, that booklet you link to is freely distributable for nonprofit, educational use. That's exactly what I'm saying professors should do.

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[NeoDevin]

Yes, but even if he bound and published it, and sold it for profit, I would still prefer it over Stewart's or any of the other `standard' intro books.

Edit: Also, it was just one example, from an amazing prof, I do recognize that not all profs are as good as him (maybe none), but it makes the case that instructor prepared materials are not always inferior to externally produced ones.

 

[CaptainQuasar]

Yes, but even if he bound and published it, and sold it for profit, I would still prefer it over Stewart's or any of the other `standard' intro books.

Well, of course, if it's really that good it's probably something that would sell on its own. If you have the sort of professor who is writing better stuff than any of the textbooks on the market, I can see why you'd be in favor of it. This just has never been my experience. It seems to me that lots of professors think they're much more deft authors than they actually are.

Edit: Yes, I agree that some people can be superior writers, for sure. It's just that in a topic like calculus I think they need to be better than about three hundred years' worth of textbooks to justify writing something and asking the students to pay for it.

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[NeoDevin]

In the end only the instructor knows how they will teach the course, and which book will fit better with their style of teaching/the topics they will cover. Barring the case where they are deliberately choosing their own book for the profit margin (which on a per book basis is fairly small, and so I don't think this is as big a problem as you seem to), if they choose their own book, and it's not a good choice for the course, what makes you think that any other book they chose would be any better?

Put another way, if they make a bad choice by choosing their own book, they'll probably make a bad choice with any other book they choose, simply because they're a bad teacher.

Edit: There are more than enough bad textbooks out there for them to choose from, if they can't recognize that their own is bad, they won't recognize that any others are bad.

 

[NeoDevin]

Also, sometimes it is just a difference in learning style. If a prof chooses/writes a book that he thinks is good, it may very well be an excellent book for someone who shares his learning style. If you learn better from a different presentation, it probably won't work for you.
I don't think anyone ever wrote a textbook that they thought was worse than the currently available ones. They write it to address some deficiency they see in the available ones, which you may not even see as a deficiency.

 

[Shackleford]

Picture this ,Sam at the star gate, she solves a problem in seconds, that is so not real. anyone that can come close to sam will be hailed as a genius.

Hey, I like Stargate. Though, they do make the occasional physics error.

 

[NeoDevin]

Hey, I like Stargate. Though, they do make the occasional physics error.

I like stargate too, but it seems to me that it's one big physics error.

 

[Topher925]

I like stargate too, but it seems to me that it's one big physics error.

Its called science fiction for a reason. There are a lot of things in that show that defy the laws of physics but your complain is about Sam of all things?