By the way ...

I was just reading an interesting and very well thought out discussion that touched on professors assigning their own textbooks for a class. Interesting read.

This isn't strictly relevant, since a) my book isn't finished, and b) it isn't required, but just so you know, I had a few thoughts in response. Probably, I should not be sharing all of them ... but there are Things you should Know.

1) I don't make a dime off of the notes, and it will probably stay this way - writing textbooks is no way to make extra cash. If you bought printed copies of the notes at the SUPe store, you basically paid for the cost of printing - $0.15/sheet, full color. The PDF version online is of course free, and contains no material that is not my own work, or subject to an open-content license.

2) As an aside, the latter point is why many courses have password-protected pages or won't put slides online: they are using copyrighted images somewhere, and cannot just post those things online for free. That is the main reason I spent way too many hours drawing my own figures. Copyright law in the US is byzantine.

3) I don't really worry that you'll read the notes and not go to class. I've even taken and posted video of half the lectures or so, which should in principle worry me even more. I am either naive or arrogant enough to rely on my charm and your sense of responsibility ;-) Probably mostly the latter. Attendance is good for whatever reason, but so long as you learn the material, I'm happy either way.

4) I think the evidence suggests I'm following the notes more closely than the book, and therefore they have some utility. Ideally, you'll read both the notes and the textbook - probably, you will find that Serway et al. explain certain things better from your point of view, and sometimes I do.

5) It is true that sometimes profs do not have a choice of textbook. Particularly for intro classes, and classes where there are multiple sections. There are many reasons for this.

6) It is true that a good textbook is a good safety net when the lecture just doesn't make sense. Sometimes, its not your fault ...

7) It probably is, in fact, silly to spend huge amounts of cash on a book you won't open again after the class ends. In that regard, I wish my notes were complete. Keep in mind that point 5 means that there is almost always a good used textbook market.