{"id":113,"date":"2016-08-10T19:19:53","date_gmt":"2016-08-10T23:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/bookends\/?p=113"},"modified":"2016-08-10T19:19:53","modified_gmt":"2016-08-10T23:19:53","slug":"books-hard-copy-or-e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/amathematicalword\/2016\/08\/10\/books-hard-copy-or-e\/","title":{"rendered":"Books: Hard Copy or E-?"},"content":{"rendered":"

How important are e-books for math?\u00a0 I always start a blog with one question, and end up asking many more.<\/p>\n

People according to their personality, their intentions, limitations and environments read differently.\u00a0\u00a0 Even when there were only hard copy books, I remember noting the different ways my fellow math graduate students read math books.\u00a0 Some had a habit of reaching for a math book for bedtime reading.\u00a0 To me, truly reading meant sitting at a desk or table, notebook and pen in hand, scribbling and drawing as I read. Others I knew sat perfectly still while reading, hardly moving a muscle for hours.\u00a0 Some read while listening to music, and one person I knew even played piano while reading.<\/p>\n

By now, most avid readers (particularly of non-technical books) are familiar with kindles and other e-readers. They are about the same size and weight of a paperback; you can turn pages with roughly the same movement; you can resize fonts, look up words you don\u2019t know with an easy click;\u00a0 many have their own light source; and most of all there is no weight difference between the data of one book and that of hundreds or thousands of them.\u00a0\u00a0 These qualities alone attract even diehard proponents of paper books, especially those who are frequent travelers.<\/p>\n

But the popularity and availability of e-books and e-readers for mathematics lags behind.\u00a0 What more can and should E-books offer, particularly in math? \u00a0 Are we taking enough advantage of current technological capabilities?\u00a0 Is there a need to specifically treat the particular nature of mathematics exposition?\u00a0 Should we have moving graphics, and built-in software that help illustrate the material, perhaps with interactive feature?\u00a0 What about making it possible for classes and reading groups to share comments online while reading a text?<\/p>\n

Books are a medium for packaging and communicating ideas.\u00a0 Assuming that there will always be a need to record and deliver mathematical ideas using some sort of print medium, do you think math e-books are here to stay, if so in what form, and how will they affect teaching, research and individual reading habits in the years to come?<\/p>\n

\n

Moving Things Around by Kerins, Young, Cuoco, Stevens, and Pilgrim.\"sstp-5-cov\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Increasingly I see books that make me wonder…what would this look like if…?\u00a0 One example is a new series of books produced by the Park City Summer Program\u00a0 for secondary school teachers. \u00a0 These sequenced collections of problems are carefully chosen to progress future teachers toward a deeper understanding of a subject through exploration, discussion and active learning: in this particular case the topic is permutations, symmetries and numbers.\u00a0 Users of the book are encouraged to experiment with computer software and to work in teams.\u00a0 Could electronic media help to implement the goals of these books on a wider scale, connecting people who are unable to attend sessions like the one at Park City?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How important are e-books for math?\u00a0 I always start a blog with one question, and end up asking many more. People according to their personality, their intentions, limitations and environments read differently.\u00a0\u00a0 Even when there were only hard copy books, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,6],"tags":[8,10,17,20],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookends","category-innovation","category-publishing-issues-and-trends","tag-academic-book-publishing","tag-bookends","tag-readers","tag-technology-trends"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/amathematicalword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/amathematicalword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/amathematicalword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/amathematicalword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/amathematicalword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/amathematicalword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/amathematicalword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/amathematicalword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/amathematicalword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}