10 ms·
Free Springer math books
- pervycreeper 11y agoCan anyone explain how to differentiate between the multiple instances of the same titles? Is there a difference?
- jlarocco 11y agoThe first line of text after the first heading is "duplicates = multiple editions". Labeling them or adding " (first edition)" to the title would've been nice, though.
- kevindeasis 11y agoA gift that keeps on giving. Some are under an OA license. This is incredible. Does anyone know if there any backup/mirror links available, just in case that hosting server shuts down?
- fibo 11y agoThank you for sharing, mathematician writing here: all topics and content looks really great
- pmiller2 11y agoI was about to post the same thing. Some of these books are among the best textbooks for their subjects.
- fermigier 11y agoAnyone knows why Springer made all these books free ? Is there a backstory to it ?
- pervycreeper 11y agoLast ditch attempt to appease the masses before their inevitable demise.
- sdenton4 11y agoLooks like Springer runs a open publishing model for books, with a fee charged to the author, as usual . My guess would be that they are seeding a bunch of these classic books to increase visibility of the open publishing scheme. And anyway, there's probably genlib copies of most of these floating around anyways...
- delish 11y agoJust to emphasize your comment: anyone looking to expand their knowledge should download pdfs and epubs from genlib/libgen (I pronounce it "libgen"). It's changed the way I read. Now, if I have even a passing interest in a book, I download it and read the introduction. If I like it, I get it from the library. If I like my first reading, I buy the book. The two things that have increased the range of my intellectual interests in 2015 have been libgen and twitter (where people more interesting than me talk about their research with others).
- archgoon 11y agoWhat research / researchers are you following?
- Karunamon 11y agoI've got to point out that libgen is effectively a book piracy site. I don't personally have a problem with this, but others may want to keep that in mind.
- delish 11y agoI'll play devil's advocate: do you? In America (the only country I'm familiar with), people are sued by the RIAA or MPAA for copyright infringement. I've never seen a pattern of lawsuits for pirating books[0]. So there's very little risk of getting caught. If someone has a moral problem with my piracy, I'd reply that I'm a paying member of my local library and I purchase far more books than the average person. If someone has a moral problem with them personally pirating, I'd suggest trying it out. You'll be so happy that you'll retroactively justify your behavior. Like me! [0] Exceptional cases like Aaron Swartz (who downloaded 1 million+ Jstor articles) do not a pattern make.
- jesuslop 11y agoIncludes Categories for the Working Mathematician by Mac Lane.
- cies 11y agoCame here to post this as well.. Here the link to the 2nd edition (it also has the first edition in the collection): http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-1-4757-4721-8.pdf http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-1-4757-4721... More on category theory --but more for a programmer's usecase-- here: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-textbook-for-Category-theory https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-textbook-for-Category... And here: http://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-programmers-the-preface/ http://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-pr...
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoSpringer's got an incredible number of free texts up there, including over 3000 volumes in the "Lecture Notes in Mathematics" series.
- mrcactu5 11y agolecture notes in mathematics is NOT free. they are making me buy http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-22704-7_1 http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-22704-7_1
- tomku 11y agoOnly texts published >10 years ago (2004 or earlier) are free.
- mrcactu5 11y agoWow. I been looking all over for this: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/3-540-44890-X http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/3-540-44890-X
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoI don't know how I got 3000, it's 1800+ free and 300-ish non-free, sorry to get your hopes up.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- HillRat 11y agoLink to Springer's main open access page: (http://www.springeropen.com/books http://www.springeropen.com/books). More than math texts up there!
- patrickyeon 11y agoVery true, I see >56,000 English-language books that seem to be available for free ( http://link.springer.com/search?facet-content-type=%22Book%22&showAll=false&facet-language=%22En%22 http://link.springer.com/search?facet-content-type=%22Book%2... ).
- tomtoise 11y agoIs there a way to scrape these programatically? I feel like it'd be a useful repository to have stashed away for whatever future reason.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agohttp://scrapy.org http://scrapy.org would almost certainly work.
- spooningtamarin 11y agoThey programatically disallow that if you try.
- iso8859-1 11y agoMaybe it would be possible to scrape the ISBN's and get them from Library Genesis?
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoYou could have done that at any time in the past few years tho.
- jlarocco 11y ago
- hellofunk 11y agoWhy are so many of the books listed 2 or 3 times with the same title but different filename? Are they different versions or just redundant copies?
- tzs 11y agoIt says near the top that "duplicates = multiple editions".
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- aswanson 11y agoThanks, you saved untold fortunes I was planning on surrendering to Bezos in pursuit of these tomes of arcane magic.
- noobermin 11y agoRandom Question. What are the prospects for someone entering graduate school in mathematics, say if they have a post graduate degree in another STEM field, later in life? Assuming they can take the math GRE and score well?
- EliRivers 11y agoI completed a masters in physics my first time around, and over a decade later decided to do a masters in maths (which I completed). On my own experiences, if you're willing to put the hours in, the prospects are pretty good. Maths isn't magic, and I found there wasn't much at the standard masters level that couldn't be at least managed (if not mastered) with significant but not superhuman effort. I've no idea about math GREs; I'm in the UK.
- noobermin 11y agoMay I ask further, what field? Is it more applied or theoretical (I guess that is answered by the field).
- EliRivers 11y agoGiven the context of this thread, let me say my chosen specialisations in the Physics were generally not towards the frightening mathematics end of the spectrum (and without naming specific subjects, the lowest score I achieved in my entire life on any exam was in a maths heavy exam in the final year of my formal physics education). I was not a mathematical wunderkind.
- sdenton4 11y agoMy general experience with the GRE is that it skewed heavily towards multivariable calculus, since it's the one 'advanced' topic that you can pretty well guarantee that all undergraduate math students will have encountered. Upper level courses already diverge into analysis, groups, combinatorics, and more, so you can't really make a standardized test heavy on group theory, for example. So get damned sharp on your multivariable calc and you'll be good to go.... As for the bigger life direction question, I have no idea without further context.
- chaitanyav 11y agolink to browse the books http://link.springer.com/search/page/2?facet-content-type=%22Book%22&date-facet-mode=between&facet-end-year=2004&facet-language=%22En%22&sortOrder=oldestFirst&facet-discipline=%22Mathematics%22&facet-start-year=1858 http://link.springer.com/search/page/2?facet-content-type=%2...
- mindcrime 11y agoYou know, I'm not exactly a huge Springer fan, much the same as many HN'ers I expect. But I do believe in "giving the Devil his due", if you will. And this is pretty freaking cool. I mean, yeah, sure you can probably find most or all of this stuff using Libgen or torrents, but for Springer to put this much great stuff out there for free, legitimately, is mondo bodacious.
- LordHog 11y agoWhy are Springer books bad?
- jonsterling 11y agoSpringer books are great—but academic publishers are widely reviled.
- mindcrime 11y agoOh, I don't mean to besmirch the quality of the content of their books. It's not the books that people dislike, it's the company and some of their business practices - epecially the journal publishing side of things.
- andreasley 11y agoI believe you're talking about "Axel Springer AG" (the publisher of "Bild" that loves to fight against AdBlockers). The free books are from "Springer Science+Business Media", a completely different company. http://www.springer.com/us/about-springer/company-information/know-your-springer/do-you-mean-springer-springer-or-springer-/18482 http://www.springer.com/us/about-springer/company-informatio...
- thebear 11y agoGuess there won't be a royalty check for me this year. http://tinyurl.com/hmwpf8e http://tinyurl.com/hmwpf8e I'm totally fine with having our book available for free; actually, I prefer it that way. Yet I find it a bit odd that Springer never even notified any of the authors. I suppose as copyright owners, they can do that.
- sireat 11y agoHow much of a royalty are we talking about in say 2014? Enough for a cup of coffee or for a used VW Golf? I know that it is rare for modern programming books to make much money for their authors. Thus I imagine for a highly specialized math book it would be even rare.
- thebear 11y agoAfter the initial excitement ;-) had settled down in the mid-nineties, it was, on order of magnitude, about $100 per year. Every once in a while, an interested mathematician would buy a copy. Other than that, in order to sell such a book, there has to be a graduate level class on the subject at some university (attended typically by about 5 people), and the teacher has to pick your book over a handful of other options. I haven't kept track of the grand total that I made off the book, but it would certainly be a rather crappy used VW Golf. I am so far removed from academia now that I have never thought about how I would publish a book like that today. My first impulse would be to make it a free ebook. Web search for "free course textbooks" indicates that this is not unheard of. Does anyone know how common it is, at various levels of higher education?
- spike021 11y agoFrom what I've experienced, it's common to have mostly expensive texts (for undergrad level) that can reach upwards of $175. Occasionally there are free texts from professors at other universities, or just authors in general. But more often than not they're quite pricey. Free would be great! I think a lot of students go the alternative route and torrent books or just Google to find their respective .pdf's without paying after they see the price tag at the campus store/amazon/ebay.
- nevi-me 11y agoMy last math was in high school, and I'd like to spend more time learning in the coming year. I often read research papers, and the biggest challenge for me is the notation. I can understand the stuff around set theory, and a bit of the sigma notation here and there. What I'd like is a proper introduction so I can start learning properly. Any book one would recommend? I'm keen on buying if it's not on the Springer list. Thanks in advance.
- fao_ 11y ago'What Is Mathematics?' Second Edition by Courant, Robbins & Stewart[0] is a great introduction to Mathematics in general (And covers most of the main fields), but also (iirc) is good at describing the notation used. As well as that I find Wolfram Alpha[1] and Math As Code[2] good at describing some pieces of notation. Other introductory books I've found very useful are the 'Dover Books on Mathematics' introductions series, I've found their graph theory[3] and topology[4] books rather concise and clear to read -- to my knowledge they're availible at archive.org in the collection 'folkscanomy mathematics'[5]. [0]: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematics-Elementary-Approach-Methods-Paperbacks/dp/0195105192/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mathematics-Elementary-Approach-Meth... [1]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/ https://www.wolframalpha.com/ [2]: https://github.com/Jam3/math-as-code https://github.com/Jam3/math-as-code [3]: https://archive.org/details/IntroductionToGraphTheory https://archive.org/details/IntroductionToGraphTheory [4]: https://archive.org/details/IntroductionToTopology https://archive.org/details/IntroductionToTopology [5]: https://archive.org/details/folkscanomy_mathematics https://archive.org/details/folkscanomy_mathematics
- 11y ago
- queeerkopf 11y agoThey seem to have made available almost their complete catalog up to and including 2004: http://link.springer.com/search?showAll=false&facet-content-type=%22Book%22&date-facet-mode=between&facet-start-year=1815&previous-start-year=1815&facet-end-year=2004&previous-end-year=2016 http://link.springer.com/search?showAll=false&facet-content-... This search yields 110 041 results across all disciplines covered by springer that should be free to download in complete. Only 11 451 books from the same time range are 'preview-only'. I'm not certain that this is intentional. I haven't found any statement by Springer that they make available all ebooks older than 10 years. Does anyone know more?
- sophusSU 11y agoSeems like they shut down this service.