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[grey_lensman]

First day of the new semester. Calculus at 8 am. Whee!

I've also broken the record, by more than double what I have previously ever spent on a single book. $325, on the "Virtual Environments Handbook", for my simulation systems class. I suppose that price may make sense if they're selling by weight, but really, I'd rather have the PDF. I don't

Comments

[drsulak]

What!?! Are these like the only people in the world who understand this subject? Like getting a text book written by Stephen Hawking?

Or are they the same ones teaching your course... "You need to buy this book. It's super expensive, but the author really knows his stuff" :-)

[gomeza]

Oh, I have one of those. "Thermodynamics" by Enrico Fermi. It's trade softback, only 3/8" thick, and completely arcane/impenetrable. I've leafed through it, but can't pretend I understood much of it.

[grey_lensman]

Well, it's a 1200 page tome on everything you'd ever want to know about environment simulators, in the Mark's Handbook vein. It's also a University press, which is good or 20% more right there. THere's a whole pile of authors, so I'll have to check if the instructor is one of them.

[gomeza]

Holy crap. I knew textbooks were expensive, but that's crazy. I think that's even more expensive than some of Judy's weighty acupuncture tomes.

I think the most expensive book (by weight) that I ever bought was Ihor Vitkovitsky's "High Power Switching". It's a trade format hardbound book with just 300 pages. I paid $80 over a decade ago, used copies are $200+ now... I suspect because only 2,000 copies were ever printed. Vitkovitsky's definition of "high power" (1x10!9 watts and up) makes it a rather esoteric subject. :)

Some day I may ask you to explain calculus to me, or at least suggest tools and subjects to study which would help it make sense to a math n00b. :)

[starstraf]

For ONE book? Oh my