Proposal to list reputable books that are possibly not free-of-charge to read

[davidleejy]

Hi, I'm raising this issue ticket to propose the possibility of listing reputable books that aren't necessarily free to read, but are commonly employed in the teaching of university-level math courses. Examples include, but aren't limited to, James Munkres' Topology, and Walter Rudin's Principles of Mathematical Analysis.

Thank you for your consideration.

[rossant]

I think that would be a good idea, would you have suggestions as to where to put these books within the list, and how to differentiate them from free resources?

[davidleejy]

If it sits well with you, I could list the books I have in mind along with categories (e.g., "Real Analysis") I think each book could be placed under in this discussion thread. This way, the public could comment on my proposed additions before I submit a pull request.

how to differentiate them from free resources?

Unfortunately, I don't know of any particularly clever ways of achieving this aside from adding a symbol (e.g.,
$, 💲, 🔒), or adding a tag like [paid], [non-free], [not free] to the start or end of an entry that isn't free to read.

It may be possible, after some thought, that we arrive at the opinion that having a highly visible manner of differentiating paid and free resources isn't crucial in the sense that its absence doesn't impede the functionality and goal of this repository – which is a compilation of good mathematics resources which aren't necessarily free. 🤔 In my mind's eye, I imagine a user, say a math student, clicking on a handful of links to realize (with slight dismay, perhaps) that some links are entries for non-free books due to these links pointing to the author's landing webpage for the book, the Wikipedia entry for that book, or a non-profit platform's entry of that book (e.g., openlibrary.org).

---

While writing the above, my thoughts led me to the question of whether links to commercial online book retailers should be acceptable. On this matter, I have minor reservations on linking to commercial online book retailers like Amazon despite the convenience it might afford some users because of two reasons:

1. Linking to a particular commercial book retailer implies, at best, an implicit favoring of the selected retailer (e.g. Amazon) over other retailers.

2. Linking to a commercial book retailer opens up the discussion to profit motives which might lead contributors pushing their own referral links. (Referral links are used by online retailers like Amazon to incentivize sharing of Amazon links; the referrer is rewarded when someone purchases the item in question after clicking on his referral link.) While I don't think that allowing referral links is in and of itself in bad taste because allowing such links present a monetary incentive to contribute, going in this direction could be wrongly construed by some to be an incentive to list mediocre resources in a bid to spread their own referral links.

Akin to a knife not being good or bad in and of itself, referral links incentivize contributions, but in the hands of unsavory actors, it invites undesirable contributions. A potential resolution to balance the benefits and drawbacks associated with referral links could be to require that referral links always be paired with a non-commercial link, thereby provider readers an option uninfluenced by the desire for financial gain. An example of such an entry could be:

<!-- in README.md -->

* [Principles of Mathematical Analysis](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL18330726M/Principles_of_mathematical_analysis) - Walter Rudin [(contributor davidleejy's referral link)](https://amazon.com/blah/blah/blah)

which will be rendered as:

• Principles of Mathematical Analysis - Walter Rudin (contributor davidleejy's referral link)

To maintain the neutrality of this resource, the owner(s) of this repository might wish to have a PR rule disallowing the inclusion of a commercial link if the book/article is legally free to read (i.e., the content is made free by their authors' decision).

---

Thank you for engaging in this discussion, and would be happy to hear your thoughts 😄

[rossant]

The OpenLibrary link might be sufficient since it seems to include links to buy the book, including on Amazon. That's just 1 more click to get there?

I like the idea of adding a symbol to the start of an entry for paid resources. Historically, this repository has mostly proposed free resources. We could add a note at the beginning of the page stating that all resources are assumed to be freely available, except those with a paid symbol.

For a suggested list of books to be added, perhaps you could also directly work on a pull request with your suggestions, and we can continue the discussion there?

Other folks are invited to chime in here or on that pull request. 🙂

[davidleejy]

Hi Rossant, thanks for weighing in.

We could add a note at the beginning of the page stating that all resources are assumed to be freely available, except those with a paid symbol

For a suggested list of books to be added, perhaps you could also directly work on a pull request with your suggestions, and we can continue the discussion there?

Ok, will submit a PR with a list and a note at the beginning 😄

[davidleejy]

Currently, the type of content (e.g., book, lecture notes) is situated at higher level than the area (e.g., analysis) and I'd like to propose nesting the type of content headers under the area headers. Roughly speaking, my proposed idea is to go from:

<!-- current readme.md layout-->

## Books
...

## Lecture Notes

### Area 1
...

### Area 2
...

to:

<!-- proposed readme.md layout-->

## Area 1
### Books
...
### Lecture Notes
...

## Area 2
### Books
...
### Lecture Notes
...

I'm proposing this in the hope that the new layout will look better overall when the list of books under each area grows.

What do you think? 😄

[rossant]

Sounds like a good idea to me! Anyone else wants to comment on this proposition?

[davidleejy]

Another idea that I'd think is worth considering is shifting the "type of content" section header to entry-level descriptions, as depicted in this example. This brings two advantages: (1) the list becomes more accomodative to all content types (lecture videos, insightful blog posts), and (2) "similar" entries can be grouped together (e.g. book and lecture notes by the same author).

Example:

## Linear Algebra
Linear Algebra Done Right - Prof. Sheldon Axler (textbook)
Linear Algebra Done Right video playlist - Prof. Sheldon Axler (Youtube video)
...

## Topology
Topology Without Tears - Prof. Sidney A. Morris (textbook)
Topology Without Tears supplementary video playlist- Prof. Sidney A. Morris (Youtube video)
...

## Area X
Intro to X - John G. Li (textbook)
Basics of X - Tom F. T. (textbook)
Playlist for X - mathlover (Youtube video)
...

Am open to comments from other people. Will wait at least a week or so before submitting a PR.

[rossant]

Yes, I was about to suggest the same thing. Perhaps we could try adding icons at the beginning of each item, with 1 different icon per content type?

[davidleejy]

Yes, I was about to suggest the same thing. Perhaps we could try adding icons at the beginning of each item, with 1 different icon per content type?

I thought about this too, but didn't suggest it due to the possibility of challenging situations where:

1. there aren't icons that are visually representative of some content types, or,
2. there exist different content types that are somewhat similar in nature, and there aren't icons that are represent them and their differences simultaneously.

Here, I assume icons refer to emojis. But, if it is reasonable to consider also using unicode, alphabets, or a combination of these in the readme's iconography, then I think the two situations above could be readily circumvented if they arise in the future.

[rossant]

Agreed. We could start by identifying here the most common content types and determine which emojis/unicode characters etc could be used for each.

[davidleejy]

Perhaps we could start with these three icons depicting content types commonly encountered in university-level math:

📖 Books
🎥 Videos
📝 Lecture notes, slides, articles, papers

[rossant]

yes, looks good!