<nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1156497201.037900.187640@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Roy Schestowitz wrote:
Intro to Statistics course costs vs. open source / creative commons /
remix
education
,----[ Quote ]
| Here is the research on open source/free resources for statistics. It
| turns out that all the material and tools we will go over in my Intro
| to Stats course this fall (2006) is available for free, as opposed to
| the apx. $180 for SAS license and new textbook, or even $150 for SAS
| license and used textbook. Even considering that the textbook could be
| sold back for half-price, the cost to a student is still $105.
Textbook publishers nowadays do everything in their power to make sure
that old textbooks are not usable---bringing out new editions
incompatible with old ones and marketing them to faculty. The general
techniques should sound familiar---as with Microsoft, drug companies,
etc. The truth is that the new textbooks are often inferior to the old
ones, especially the classics. In fact, if you compare to the
classics, you see that there has been a gradual dumbing down.
Some textbook publishers actually bribe the professors, giving them a
cut of the sales made, to ensure that the professors establish their lessons
in such a way as to force the students to always buy the latest version of
the textbook.
Luckily, when I went to university, almost all the course materials were
provided in the form of HTML pages of PDF files for free download. This may
be because of the nature of the program though (Comptuter Science). Every
time I was forced to buy a textbook, it was for a non Comp-Sci class (E.g. a
managerial class or an arts class).
- Oliver
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