Keeping your textbooks

jwxie
Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:01:49 +0000

I will keep all my science, engineering and math textbooks. I will restate what my professor said earlier this week to the class:

“Keep the textbook and because you have used it, you can quickly reference it. Google is good but there are too much to digest. Other textbooks are great, but you never used them before so it can be time consuming. I still go back to my ancient calculus textbook when I really need it. Maybe you just need a formula, or an example to show a contradiction, or a famous “line” that you absolutely need, and they are in the book. You open it, and you find it.”

So for engineering students, keep those textbooks. You might need them to reference one or two things, and very often you might want to review how the authors “solve the problems”, which google is not an expert at all.

Very often, wolframalpha fail me when I need to reference something in math. I think this really important to the undergraduates. I am glad that I never sold any of my major textbooks yet.
And great question: I know I did the right thing :)