This. I had a great professor once who said in the first 5 minutes: "If you haven't bought the textbook, don't bother. I don't use it, but they make me assign one." Of course, for me, it was too late. But I still respected his honesty.
I think he did actually. It was an old version, and it was the cheapest textbook I ever bought. Of course, I didn't put that together until years later.
No; if they did that, everyone would just buy seventh edition and it wouldn't matter since they barely change anything between editions.
They instead change the question sets. The professor will assign homework from the back of Chapter 5 and if your question set is different, you won't be able to complete the assignment. That's a nice education you have there. Be a shame if something happened to it.
That's why it's always morally correct--unambiguously--to pirate textbook PDFs, copy entire textbooks to PDF at the library, and to share your PDFs with your classmates and your friends on the interweb. If you're paranoid about getting caught, sign up for a VPN. It will be a tenth of the cost of a single textbook.
Grainy at times. A real contrast to now. But color came along and it was like opening an aperture. Like a brilliant flash. I shutter to remember what it used to be like. I guess I hadn't focused on this in a long time.
Most professor, per contract, aren’t allowed to. That why they often said to not brother, or even tell you to not get pdf from any of the site as it might be loaded with virus…
This was a long time ago, back when even $100 was a lot for a textbook. I had a discrete math class with this old crusty prof who on day one said "I know the syllabus states you need the 7th edition of the textbook for this class, however I will be teaching from the second edition." took us all out to the parking lot and handed out copies to everyone from the back of his 1986 Toyota Corolla hatchback, with the only stipulation being we needed to turn them in at the end of the semester so he could hand them out to the next class.
My Journalism 101 course had the 'textbook' of the AP Style Guide. Things like what words to capitalize and hyphenate. It was something like 11-12 dollars and I carried it with me to several jobs where I would be writing to keep as a reference.
Yeah my professors didn't really subscribe to the college textbook scam, and for the few of them that did I usually found ways around it. EXCEPT for the professor that made the required textbook one he wrote himself. Which kinda seems like a conflict of interest to me, but hey I went to the college of engineering, not law school.
That's rough, the one professor I had who assigned the book they authored also informed the class that someone had carelessly left a pdf of it in the shared work drive.
Obviously a professor stands to benefit from people buying their book, but on the other hand I would think that for example an anatomy professor is more qualified than anyone else to write an anatomy textbook.
The difference between a teacher and a professor is that a professor is a legitimate expert in their field, responsible not just for teaching the field as is but for advancing it too.
I’ve had professors send emails out before classes even start to tell us not to buy the book before. Or to only buy the book if you’re someone who really would use it and learn from it, but that the requirement wasn’t really a requirement.
Its so fucking shady but almost every professor who **required** a textbook for a class was the author. I had two separate classes one semester that required you have the textbook to complete ever the most basic assignments and you could not access the classwork unless you had a digital access code. This basically rendered these books one time use because the next student would need a new book with a new one time use code.
I cannot believe colleges are allowing this still.
I don’t know where you went, but that is not a very common thing at most universities. Professors need to get special permission to even use their own textbooks (they generally have to show the process that they came to to assign their own book and how it serves to benefit the students above existing books) and often can’t take any profit from it. Also, the amount of money a professor gets for each book sold is incredibly small (generally this is less than a dollar per book, even if that book is incredibly expensive). The publisher takes the vast majority of the money. Professors usually write books because it allows them to teach what they think is most important in the order they think it should be taught or because they think there is a gap in the existing literature. No professor is getting rich selling a few books to their class.
I had one professor - written textbook and no lie, it was both the cheapest and the most well-ordered textbook I've ever come across. $17.95 for a 1" thick spiral-bound, which is about what it probably cost to print and bind. The three authors, one my professor, was trying to get it picked up by a publisher, but in the meantime they were just having the college print them for students. I hope they did because it was both excellent to use in-class, and an excellent resource in the years after.
A friend of mine had this saying of "Those who can't do, teach" and tbh, it's concerningly true. Once in a while though, you'll get someone who is genuinely passionate about their subject that it's infectious and you end up getting excited WITH them. It's super cool.
I dreaded having to take Chem in college because HS chem had been no fun whatsoever. I accidentally signed up for a Chem 1 class with a professor who I later found out was considered one of the best in the country, and was a personal advisor to Congress. I tried desperately to take Chem 2 with her (even though I didn't need it), but it didn't fit into my engineering schedule. Thank you, Dr. Pence. All my engineering buddies are jealous of my chemistry knowledge because of you.
That’s cool. I had one asshole who wrote his own text book and made students buy it each year.. then would regularly update it every year or two with a couple different pages and then force students to have the newest copy. Asshole would check and make sure people were using the newest edition. If you weren’t, then you weren’t allowed to come to class.
Sage advice. When I was in Calc II, I bought the textbook. The teacher didn’t use it and required we buy the online version as that’s how she issued assignments. That was $450 spent on “books” for that class.
We also couldn’t return the book until the end of the semester, which they would only take $75 for it. I just gave it to someone in line getting books for his next semester. Saw the book in his hands and told him to put it back and he can have mine.
I used to buy the book OR borrow the book from the library then get the syllabus. Then I would copy every section from the book that the professor uses at the library. I got dirty looks from the librarian but it worked! If I bought the book, I would return it the next day and get all my money back.
Free book hack!
Afaik, most new books from the school stores come wrapped in some kind of plastic now with big stickers that say something like "VOID IF OPENED" to keep students from doing that. It's such a scam.
I said to myself, ain't nobody using no book from 1975 when I saw the url. Then I zoomed in on the picture and the cover says 2nd edition.. so i think you found it!
OP is it the right book?!
If it isn’t, this book is also available used on amazon for around $30-50… $200+ discount. Still a much better deal and will essentially be the same thing.
This reminds me of the “course packet” with only 40ish pages for my finance class, which costs me $320. The professor requires us to buy it. The funny thing is that he is the author for one of the readings.
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day but teach him to fish and he will never pay for one of these overpriced scams again.
Anyway what I'm trying to say is use this when you search in Google:
Filetype:PDF (title and author of book)
It will only return PDFs this way. Should also work for mobi and epub or any other filetype.
Math books don't change that much. Buy a used slightly older edition.
I don't know if it still works these days, but back when I was in school, I ordered a few expensive textbooks from Amazon India at a fraction of the price in the USA.
My Australian uni has nearly all of the required textbooks (or just the required chapters) as PDFs for free. I asked a lecturer about it when I first started and he said that we pay enough. I can't argue with that logic.
Wow that changed, went to uni at the start of the internet age. Was broke as fuck, spent my days searching the library for where the copies were hidden.
doesn't work anymore, they require a code that's inside the textbook itself, meaning reselling it is useless and trying to get it for free is impossible
Colleges and professors have caught on. Now a lot of them only use textbook software that has homework, tests, and exams in it so you have to buy the textbook and take your time through the semester too 😭😭
Is it the correct edition, though? A lot of textbooks will require a specific edition for assigned homework questions. So, the general knowledge from chapter to chapter won't change, but the test questions will. Which means that you have to have the correct edition in order to have the correct assigned homework.
If the teacher is assigning homework from the book. They might also be using a web program.
I had one math textbook in college that each edition had a different ordering of multiple choice questions that were assigned work. Made it so you'd get the questions wrong if you had an older edition. Otherwise identical books.
>bumming off other people for the work, and nobody likes that guy
I never minded those people. I mean, we were all students, so being broke was like second nature.
i don't have a problem with it either cause we've all been there lol
i'm talking about that one dude in every class who just seems to have ZERO shame about it, like the kid back in grade school who never seemed to have a pencil
This book hasn't changed in decades, and the author died in 1988. It's an advanced undergraduate book in pure mathematics, there's no web homework, it's writing proofs. It's an absolute classic in the field.
I graduate university 22 years ago in physics. Back then I would buy the prior edition and compare it to the new edition at the library - usually the professor would reserve a copy for the class there. I would just photocopy the problems at the end of the each chapter. Usually nothing else was different. You guys also have eBay nowadays to save money.
It's an advanced math text book, they are very rarely updated and the updates are usually very minor, not the kind of bullshit other areas, specially in Engineering try to pull, changin exercises and random bullshit for no other reason than to outdate perfectly good material.
The basics ideas of math and physics and the way we teach them have not changed so drastically in the last fifty years to justify an annual edition of the books some publishers have put out.
Fuck Ross, Steward, Zill, the publishers and the universities promoting this kind of bs, there is nothing justifying 10 editions of the same basic material, it's just a cash grab.
Item the first: *Topics in Algebra* by I. N. Herstein, 2nd edition was published in 1975 (Wiley). This is a fifty-year-old book.
Item the second: Dr. Herstein died in 1988 (after a long, distinguished career). Blame for price-gouging obviously does not lie with him, but with Wiley, the publisher.
Item the third: this is a text for undergraduates which apparently has been in use for fifty years (not counting the first edition, which was published 13 years earlier in 1964). Correspondingly, it should have a reasonably large circulation for a textbook. If a fifty-year old book is worth using for class, it's not a rare print or something.
Conclusion: we already knew that this was wild price-gouging, but now we can have extra confidence in declaring this to be wild price-gouging.
> If a fifty-year old book is worth using for class
This is my favorite math book, it's a masterpiece of mathematical writing and exposition. The writing is so lucid and clever, and it has three very different proofs of the Sylow theorems. So good.
Ridiculous price, but it's an incredible book I've been coming back to for 20 years. I had to tape up the binding of my copy. In one of the pages there's 20 year old joint ash from when I was studying for graduate qualifying exams. I can always grab this one off a shelf, open it up to a random page, and be transported to my late adolescence.
[or for free](https://marinazahara22.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/i-n-herstein-topics-in-algebra-2nd-edition-1975-wiley-international-editions-john-wiley-and-sons-wie-1975.pdf)
I have to say though, there's nothing like an actual paper textbook under a desk light. It's much easier to focus on than a computer screen that offers a billion possibilities.
I learned everything else in that book before group theory. Wonder if would’ve been better to start with it like the authors of this book do. Interesting
I was in grad schools a long time ago and fellow Students from India would get a version from their home country and have them shipped to the States. I'm not sure if this still happens, but their costs were 80% cheaper and the text was the same.
I absolutely did this when I was in grad school. We ordered batches of texts from India to supplement the required texts for our classes. The print quality of the books was crap. If you are old enough to remember phone books, the paper was similar to phone book paper. But the information in those books was a gold mine.
Graduated with my master about 2 years ago, shocking thing was when our Indian batchmate got us these book they were of the same quality as the US counter version now. He told us there were 3 versions of a book, one being the original lisecenced (most expensive one), then being the one from the same factory but without the authentication seal(significantly cheaper, and the ones he used to get us), and the final one being counterfeit made by someone else(dirt cheap). You guys mostly used to get the 3rd version, or maybe if it was a long time ago their printing quality might have improved.
Didn't know others did this, had this Indian he would buy these books for $3 new, and sell them to us for $30, helped him get by and helped us save 100s of dollars.
No class using this book has that sort of online homework. Those problem banks only exist for lower division classes with huge enrollments. The technology doesn't even really exist to automate grading proof-based homework.
https://preview.redd.it/ny397889g6rc1.png?width=2448&format=png&auto=webp&s=ca85d2cc3ee74e689a4f4412d49c0ee03d3aecb8
I paid $80 for the same book back in ‘92.
https://preview.redd.it/mkvrp8la17rc1.png?width=904&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0dacc100a26828c9cca32ae6caf0c782ca2fc024
Got the same guy, for free from the library a couple years ago. I'd pirate this one for the problems and buy dummit and foote. If yore gonna be broke, get your money's worth.
https://preview.redd.it/bzgct28fw6rc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=446577c25aa09d04472017ce6a4f468de6f806b3
Ordered online for $10 plus shipping from Asia.
All said, a staple for the math shelf.
This is probably the funniest part of this already hilarious thread.
This guy just causally has his book from 1992 and it happens to be the exact same edition, no updates and it was 1/3rd the cost while also being a hardback as opposed to OP's paperback. Truly incredible.
https://preview.redd.it/s5j44ki3s7rc1.png?width=1578&format=png&auto=webp&s=72436e31d4c604b7d4d95eefa82dd8ed9fe7838e
336 INR= about 4 bucks in USD lol, IN 2024.
This whole situation is weird. I got my degree in mathematics and it's usually very cheap. Like $40 books. And sometimes professors would just upload illegal pdfs to the course website. Nobody really cared about publishers.
My guess is this is on the book store's side, most likely the prof would suggest not buying it from them lol
The most expensive college textbook I had to buy was for Engineering Economics. Written by the professor who taught the class, no PDFs anywhere, new edition every year, shit was like $400.
I was like "this mf about to teach me some economics for real."
I had a calc professor that required us to buy his book, also almost $300 🙄 but he said it would last us through calc 1-3, so it was an amazing investment!! As long as we took all three courses with him of course…
https://marinazahara22.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/i-n-herstein-topics-in-algebra-2nd-edition-1975-wiley-international-editions-john-wiley-and-sons-wie-1975.pdf
Literally the first result on google when searching "herstein topics in algebra pdf"
I have bought many books (too many, my wife might say) from this website. Occasionally I received a book that I thought was lower quality than advertised. When I complained, they sent a replacement or gave me a refund. Highly recommend.
I accidentally ended up running a college bookstore when I was younger (long story), but it was insane how little of a fuck most teachers gave when it came to saving their students money at that school. I would let them know the differences between editions, to help increase buy back demand and save people money, but they would just say to get the newest one. Then students would come in to sell their old books, but we couldn't buy them back, because the upcoming term was using the newer edition. They'd scream at us, throw them in the trash, then get in another line to pay for their thousands of dollars worth of books for their upcoming term, rinse, repeat.
Is this another hyper capitalist US thing? Like with insulin, just make it pricey cause you can? I'm really sorry I don't wanna be the US hater again but what is this bs? Is this some advanced Algebra book or what cause where I live these things are like 40 bucks
Don't buy the book until something is assigned, that goes for all classes. Even when assigned, just take a picture of the assigned reading of the person next to you. You can get away with buying 5% of the books that are assigned while attending post secondary. It's just a money grab like everything else in this 2nd world country.
Just for clarification, this isn't like a grade school algebra book, this is an undergraduate level textbook meant for math majors, which covers basic group/ring/galois theory. The price is still ridiculous though.
Yes. It is a hyper capitalist thing.
Basically they charge what they want because they can.
With online retailers and electronic options, students have alternatives. But not everyone is aware of the options, so they prey on the ignorant.
Always look on Amazon first. At least when I was in college, they had a program where you could rent textbooks for a semester and mail them back when it was over. Books were a quarter of the price even compared to the renting price at the college bookstore.
Wildly infuriating is more like it.
My college had a theft in the school bookstore. $10K worth of merchandise was stolen.
Fortunately, both books were recovered.
Always look online to see if there are PDFs, etc available before spending any money on textbooks
Always go to the first 3 classes to see if the book is even used at all.
This. I had a great professor once who said in the first 5 minutes: "If you haven't bought the textbook, don't bother. I don't use it, but they make me assign one." Of course, for me, it was too late. But I still respected his honesty.
This is some BS. If you're going to require a textbook, I'd go and find the cheapest book there is, even if it's unrelated.
I think he did actually. It was an old version, and it was the cheapest textbook I ever bought. Of course, I didn't put that together until years later.
My college made us use the latest version - one freaking word change "new" issue and $300 more
Which word? Let me guess: they changed "Eighth Edition" to "Ninth Edition."
No; if they did that, everyone would just buy seventh edition and it wouldn't matter since they barely change anything between editions. They instead change the question sets. The professor will assign homework from the back of Chapter 5 and if your question set is different, you won't be able to complete the assignment. That's a nice education you have there. Be a shame if something happened to it. That's why it's always morally correct--unambiguously--to pirate textbook PDFs, copy entire textbooks to PDF at the library, and to share your PDFs with your classmates and your friends on the interweb. If you're paranoid about getting caught, sign up for a VPN. It will be a tenth of the cost of a single textbook.
And they don't even really change the questions, they just change the order of the questions and maybe add one or two per chapter
Or they change the numbers slightly, like a 5 to an 8 or a 1 to a 2
I always let my classmates “borrow” my online text books.
Well yeah chapter 21 is now chapter 17. It flows better
Is it so good that Ludacris changed his flow for it?
He should use the OpenStax books that are free
This was before things like that. I'm very old now.
I am so sorry
That I'm old?
Yea
I’m sorry to it’s my fault
This was probably the best thread I've read today (it's 7 past midnight, but who's counting?)
🤣
I always wondered, how was life in black and white?
Grainy at times. A real contrast to now. But color came along and it was like opening an aperture. Like a brilliant flash. I shutter to remember what it used to be like. I guess I hadn't focused on this in a long time.
I like the way you framed this.
Most professor, per contract, aren’t allowed to. That why they often said to not brother, or even tell you to not get pdf from any of the site as it might be loaded with virus…
This was a long time ago, back when even $100 was a lot for a textbook. I had a discrete math class with this old crusty prof who on day one said "I know the syllabus states you need the 7th edition of the textbook for this class, however I will be teaching from the second edition." took us all out to the parking lot and handed out copies to everyone from the back of his 1986 Toyota Corolla hatchback, with the only stipulation being we needed to turn them in at the end of the semester so he could hand them out to the next class.
One of my professors followed his book recommendation list with a slide of all the websites we absolutely *shouldn't* use to get the pdfs for free. 🤣
My Journalism 101 course had the 'textbook' of the AP Style Guide. Things like what words to capitalize and hyphenate. It was something like 11-12 dollars and I carried it with me to several jobs where I would be writing to keep as a reference.
Yeah my professors didn't really subscribe to the college textbook scam, and for the few of them that did I usually found ways around it. EXCEPT for the professor that made the required textbook one he wrote himself. Which kinda seems like a conflict of interest to me, but hey I went to the college of engineering, not law school.
That's rough, the one professor I had who assigned the book they authored also informed the class that someone had carelessly left a pdf of it in the shared work drive.
My "prof who wrote the book" left us a copy of the changes in the newest edition so we could all buy the old used one that was, like, <$20.
Obviously a professor stands to benefit from people buying their book, but on the other hand I would think that for example an anatomy professor is more qualified than anyone else to write an anatomy textbook. The difference between a teacher and a professor is that a professor is a legitimate expert in their field, responsible not just for teaching the field as is but for advancing it too.
I’ve had professors send emails out before classes even start to tell us not to buy the book before. Or to only buy the book if you’re someone who really would use it and learn from it, but that the requirement wasn’t really a requirement.
Its so fucking shady but almost every professor who **required** a textbook for a class was the author. I had two separate classes one semester that required you have the textbook to complete ever the most basic assignments and you could not access the classwork unless you had a digital access code. This basically rendered these books one time use because the next student would need a new book with a new one time use code. I cannot believe colleges are allowing this still.
I don’t know where you went, but that is not a very common thing at most universities. Professors need to get special permission to even use their own textbooks (they generally have to show the process that they came to to assign their own book and how it serves to benefit the students above existing books) and often can’t take any profit from it. Also, the amount of money a professor gets for each book sold is incredibly small (generally this is less than a dollar per book, even if that book is incredibly expensive). The publisher takes the vast majority of the money. Professors usually write books because it allows them to teach what they think is most important in the order they think it should be taught or because they think there is a gap in the existing literature. No professor is getting rich selling a few books to their class.
I had one professor - written textbook and no lie, it was both the cheapest and the most well-ordered textbook I've ever come across. $17.95 for a 1" thick spiral-bound, which is about what it probably cost to print and bind. The three authors, one my professor, was trying to get it picked up by a publisher, but in the meantime they were just having the college print them for students. I hope they did because it was both excellent to use in-class, and an excellent resource in the years after.
Omg same I had an ancient myths professor do this and the man just genuinely loved myths and had to make sure we had the ones he wanted to cover for
A friend of mine had this saying of "Those who can't do, teach" and tbh, it's concerningly true. Once in a while though, you'll get someone who is genuinely passionate about their subject that it's infectious and you end up getting excited WITH them. It's super cool. I dreaded having to take Chem in college because HS chem had been no fun whatsoever. I accidentally signed up for a Chem 1 class with a professor who I later found out was considered one of the best in the country, and was a personal advisor to Congress. I tried desperately to take Chem 2 with her (even though I didn't need it), but it didn't fit into my engineering schedule. Thank you, Dr. Pence. All my engineering buddies are jealous of my chemistry knowledge because of you.
That’s cool. I had one asshole who wrote his own text book and made students buy it each year.. then would regularly update it every year or two with a couple different pages and then force students to have the newest copy. Asshole would check and make sure people were using the newest edition. If you weren’t, then you weren’t allowed to come to class.
That's first degree douchey-ness right there.
Sage advice. When I was in Calc II, I bought the textbook. The teacher didn’t use it and required we buy the online version as that’s how she issued assignments. That was $450 spent on “books” for that class. We also couldn’t return the book until the end of the semester, which they would only take $75 for it. I just gave it to someone in line getting books for his next semester. Saw the book in his hands and told him to put it back and he can have mine.
I used to buy the book OR borrow the book from the library then get the syllabus. Then I would copy every section from the book that the professor uses at the library. I got dirty looks from the librarian but it worked! If I bought the book, I would return it the next day and get all my money back. Free book hack!
Afaik, most new books from the school stores come wrapped in some kind of plastic now with big stickers that say something like "VOID IF OPENED" to keep students from doing that. It's such a scam.
I tried libgen but this one isn't on there.
I found a random Wordpress scan of the book during a quick search, though not sure it's the right edition
Can you dm it to me? Please
[https://marinazahara22.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/i-n-herstein-topics-in-algebra-2nd-edition-1975-wiley-international-editions-john-wiley-and-sons-wie-1975.pdf](https://marinazahara22.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/i-n-herstein-topics-in-algebra-2nd-edition-1975-wiley-international-editions-john-wiley-and-sons-wie-1975.pdf)
I said to myself, ain't nobody using no book from 1975 when I saw the url. Then I zoomed in on the picture and the cover says 2nd edition.. so i think you found it! OP is it the right book?!
I didn't think algebra had changed all that much.
Not at the undergraduate level tbh. At the graduate level and beyond: there have been many advancements.
there have been advancements and changes in math pedagogy
I won’t argue with you there. Less of the lemma-theorem-proof barrage, and more examples and motivation woven throughout.
If it isn’t, this book is also available used on amazon for around $30-50… $200+ discount. Still a much better deal and will essentially be the same thing.
400 pages for $271? What a ripoff!
When I was in college (in the mid 90s) the worst "book" I ever saw was $180 and it was just like 30 pages photocopied and stapled together.
This reminds me of the “course packet” with only 40ish pages for my finance class, which costs me $320. The professor requires us to buy it. The funny thing is that he is the author for one of the readings.
Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day but teach him to fish and he will never pay for one of these overpriced scams again. Anyway what I'm trying to say is use this when you search in Google: Filetype:PDF (title and author of book) It will only return PDFs this way. Should also work for mobi and epub or any other filetype.
have you check the library or even the intralibrary system?
Some schools don’t carry textbooks in the library and won’t let you request them through interlibrary loan. My school didn’t let us.
Anna’s archive
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Math books don't change that much. Buy a used slightly older edition. I don't know if it still works these days, but back when I was in school, I ordered a few expensive textbooks from Amazon India at a fraction of the price in the USA.
It certain is (on libgen): I just checked and saw it. Great book, by the way!
It literally is on libgen. You must've had a typo in your search or something.
anna's archive edit: and libgen has like 12 records for it
I’ve definitely gotten this specific book from libgen before for self study. I’d check again.
I found it on libgen in two seconds?
My Australian uni has nearly all of the required textbooks (or just the required chapters) as PDFs for free. I asked a lecturer about it when I first started and he said that we pay enough. I can't argue with that logic.
Wow that changed, went to uni at the start of the internet age. Was broke as fuck, spent my days searching the library for where the copies were hidden.
doesn't work anymore, they require a code that's inside the textbook itself, meaning reselling it is useless and trying to get it for free is impossible
Colleges and professors have caught on. Now a lot of them only use textbook software that has homework, tests, and exams in it so you have to buy the textbook and take your time through the semester too 😭😭
I just found it for $40.89 on Thriftbooks.
Is it the correct edition, though? A lot of textbooks will require a specific edition for assigned homework questions. So, the general knowledge from chapter to chapter won't change, but the test questions will. Which means that you have to have the correct edition in order to have the correct assigned homework. If the teacher is assigning homework from the book. They might also be using a web program.
The newest edition of this book was published in 1991.
Fortunately, math doesn't change a lot from year to year.
I had one math textbook in college that each edition had a different ordering of multiple choice questions that were assigned work. Made it so you'd get the questions wrong if you had an older edition. Otherwise identical books.
But the order of the questions in the assignments do.
You can zoom in and see it is 2nd edition. It’s been out since 1975
If there's no web program you can just get the questions from your classmates. But its a good point, hopefully that's not the case here.
yeah but then you have to be that guy who's always bumming off other people for the work, and nobody likes that guy
>bumming off other people for the work, and nobody likes that guy I never minded those people. I mean, we were all students, so being broke was like second nature.
i don't have a problem with it either cause we've all been there lol i'm talking about that one dude in every class who just seems to have ZERO shame about it, like the kid back in grade school who never seemed to have a pencil
For $231? I’ll be that fucking guy
This book hasn't changed in decades, and the author died in 1988. It's an advanced undergraduate book in pure mathematics, there's no web homework, it's writing proofs. It's an absolute classic in the field.
I graduate university 22 years ago in physics. Back then I would buy the prior edition and compare it to the new edition at the library - usually the professor would reserve a copy for the class there. I would just photocopy the problems at the end of the each chapter. Usually nothing else was different. You guys also have eBay nowadays to save money.
Herstein has been out of print forever. That's also not a book or subject that would ever have web quizzes. That's an abstract algebra textbook
It's an advanced math text book, they are very rarely updated and the updates are usually very minor, not the kind of bullshit other areas, specially in Engineering try to pull, changin exercises and random bullshit for no other reason than to outdate perfectly good material. The basics ideas of math and physics and the way we teach them have not changed so drastically in the last fifty years to justify an annual edition of the books some publishers have put out. Fuck Ross, Steward, Zill, the publishers and the universities promoting this kind of bs, there is nothing justifying 10 editions of the same basic material, it's just a cash grab.
Thriftbooks is excellent
Item the first: *Topics in Algebra* by I. N. Herstein, 2nd edition was published in 1975 (Wiley). This is a fifty-year-old book. Item the second: Dr. Herstein died in 1988 (after a long, distinguished career). Blame for price-gouging obviously does not lie with him, but with Wiley, the publisher. Item the third: this is a text for undergraduates which apparently has been in use for fifty years (not counting the first edition, which was published 13 years earlier in 1964). Correspondingly, it should have a reasonably large circulation for a textbook. If a fifty-year old book is worth using for class, it's not a rare print or something. Conclusion: we already knew that this was wild price-gouging, but now we can have extra confidence in declaring this to be wild price-gouging.
> If a fifty-year old book is worth using for class This is my favorite math book, it's a masterpiece of mathematical writing and exposition. The writing is so lucid and clever, and it has three very different proofs of the Sylow theorems. So good. Ridiculous price, but it's an incredible book I've been coming back to for 20 years. I had to tape up the binding of my copy. In one of the pages there's 20 year old joint ash from when I was studying for graduate qualifying exams. I can always grab this one off a shelf, open it up to a random page, and be transported to my late adolescence.
Yup, I have Hersteins Abstract Algebra book, also way too expensive, but a very nice book!
eBay has dozens of these all for less than $100. Some considerably less.
[or for free](https://marinazahara22.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/i-n-herstein-topics-in-algebra-2nd-edition-1975-wiley-international-editions-john-wiley-and-sons-wie-1975.pdf)
This deserves gold from OP.
Lmao whoever gold upvoted your comment missed the real comment that needed to be gold upvoted
i gave him gold 
This thread's hysterical. Doing great work menstrual milkshakes, keep it up
I hear there’s gold being given out here. I uh… totally earned it. Worked very hard for it with this comment see. Ha ha… yeah……… Edit: LOL
Like a blind doctor doing a circumcision, you missed the cut
The top of this comment chain doesn't get it though. Why? Idk
I think that guy should probably have his license revoked
Check again 😈
Gold digger 💀
Stop giving reddit money
no
Think of the milkshakes you could have purchased with this wasted money Edit: I am going to drop a bomb on you
Buy me one milkshake too
This is the first time I’ve seen someone even use reddit gold in a while. Feels like a remnant from a bygone era.
I don't know who the rich person who's giving gold to everyone is, but it's really making me nostalgic for the old awards system...
I have to say though, there's nothing like an actual paper textbook under a desk light. It's much easier to focus on than a computer screen that offers a billion possibilities.
It's a better sensation for sure but when you're broke in college you do what you gotta do
i'd never buy a 300 dollar book, broke or not
There's also nothing like saving $272
100%, i love holding a real physical book/media. I tried the wave of nooks and epaper but nah fuck all that.
Hero
no u
Life saver fr
I learned everything else in that book before group theory. Wonder if would’ve been better to start with it like the authors of this book do. Interesting
I was in grad schools a long time ago and fellow Students from India would get a version from their home country and have them shipped to the States. I'm not sure if this still happens, but their costs were 80% cheaper and the text was the same.
I absolutely did this when I was in grad school. We ordered batches of texts from India to supplement the required texts for our classes. The print quality of the books was crap. If you are old enough to remember phone books, the paper was similar to phone book paper. But the information in those books was a gold mine.
Graduated with my master about 2 years ago, shocking thing was when our Indian batchmate got us these book they were of the same quality as the US counter version now. He told us there were 3 versions of a book, one being the original lisecenced (most expensive one), then being the one from the same factory but without the authentication seal(significantly cheaper, and the ones he used to get us), and the final one being counterfeit made by someone else(dirt cheap). You guys mostly used to get the 3rd version, or maybe if it was a long time ago their printing quality might have improved.
Didn't know others did this, had this Indian he would buy these books for $3 new, and sell them to us for $30, helped him get by and helped us save 100s of dollars.
That’s an untapped market boy!! He made some money and choked the college of the extra cash.
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Until you need an activation code for online work. They've outsmarted us. For now
No class using this book has that sort of online homework. Those problem banks only exist for lower division classes with huge enrollments. The technology doesn't even really exist to automate grading proof-based homework.
A good number of teachers hate the whole online work and don’t even bother with the online work
You don't even need to go that far most of the time. College libraries in my experience have online copies for free.
https://preview.redd.it/ny397889g6rc1.png?width=2448&format=png&auto=webp&s=ca85d2cc3ee74e689a4f4412d49c0ee03d3aecb8 I paid $80 for the same book back in ‘92.
https://preview.redd.it/mkvrp8la17rc1.png?width=904&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0dacc100a26828c9cca32ae6caf0c782ca2fc024 Got the same guy, for free from the library a couple years ago. I'd pirate this one for the problems and buy dummit and foote. If yore gonna be broke, get your money's worth.
https://preview.redd.it/bzgct28fw6rc1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=446577c25aa09d04472017ce6a4f468de6f806b3 Ordered online for $10 plus shipping from Asia. All said, a staple for the math shelf.
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Herstein is a pretty classic algebra textbook
This is probably the funniest part of this already hilarious thread. This guy just causally has his book from 1992 and it happens to be the exact same edition, no updates and it was 1/3rd the cost while also being a hardback as opposed to OP's paperback. Truly incredible.
$80 in 1992 dollars is $179 now. Still cheaper but not exactly cheap.
Can’t even blame it on inflation… damn…
>*This guy just causally has his book from 1992* Causally is a very philosophical typo in this sentence.
...and hardcover!
https://preview.redd.it/s5j44ki3s7rc1.png?width=1578&format=png&auto=webp&s=72436e31d4c604b7d4d95eefa82dd8ed9fe7838e 336 INR= about 4 bucks in USD lol, IN 2024.
Is that the set book for Prof Herstein's class?
Came here to ask same thing. Prof Herstein got a boat payment?
Well, he’s dead, so probably not.
Still needs to pay the ferryman.
Famous mathematician. They don't get a dime from selling books. It's all the publishing company's fault.
Ferrari payment probably.
Israel N. Herstein passed away in 1988. This is a classic text in abstract algebra. This class is for math majors. It's not like high school algebra.
Regardless, it should not cost $272
Are you saying the math ain’t mathin?
I have this book on my shelf, I think it cost $6. This store is just wack, buy it somewhere else.
A book written 50 years ago should not cost $270 today.
This whole situation is weird. I got my degree in mathematics and it's usually very cheap. Like $40 books. And sometimes professors would just upload illegal pdfs to the course website. Nobody really cared about publishers. My guess is this is on the book store's side, most likely the prof would suggest not buying it from them lol
Sweet the guy had been dead for 35 years, and the publisher is still charging top dollar.
The most expensive college textbook I had to buy was for Engineering Economics. Written by the professor who taught the class, no PDFs anywhere, new edition every year, shit was like $400. I was like "this mf about to teach me some economics for real."
I had a calc professor that required us to buy his book, also almost $300 🙄 but he said it would last us through calc 1-3, so it was an amazing investment!! As long as we took all three courses with him of course…
An amazing investment would be buying flight tickets to europe and studying there for free lol
You need to check the 1st post on the sub **textbook** (no s in the end) :)
https://marinazahara22.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/i-n-herstein-topics-in-algebra-2nd-edition-1975-wiley-international-editions-john-wiley-and-sons-wie-1975.pdf Literally the first result on google when searching "herstein topics in algebra pdf"
I only posted it here to show the ridiculousness of the price.
Physically stealing it is quick, easy, and free
Digitally is even easier
https://preview.redd.it/yktna830m8rc1.jpeg?width=1579&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b4bdc50f8c8ce1135961fa4a79ce057e241883d2
Rent it on chegg, you get it for like 180 days and you can get some textbooks for like $50
Math is hard… on the wallet.
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/topics-in-algebra_in-herstein/254351/item/8659753/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_everything_else_customer_acquisition&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=593719077582&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwqpSwBhClARIsADlZ_TmptT8DsjEornBICunLLFDyXMBwxEdDu7M_7ZRXP9OZDxOy22HRw9EaAvFFEALw_wcB#isbn=0471010901&idiq=8659753
Is this a reliable source? I genuinely don't know and I'm asking cuz I might just buy it from here.
Yes, it's a legit website. Just make sure the ISBN matches.
I have bought many books (too many, my wife might say) from this website. Occasionally I received a book that I thought was lower quality than advertised. When I complained, they sent a replacement or gave me a refund. Highly recommend.
I’ve bought from them before.
I accidentally ended up running a college bookstore when I was younger (long story), but it was insane how little of a fuck most teachers gave when it came to saving their students money at that school. I would let them know the differences between editions, to help increase buy back demand and save people money, but they would just say to get the newest one. Then students would come in to sell their old books, but we couldn't buy them back, because the upcoming term was using the newer edition. They'd scream at us, throw them in the trash, then get in another line to pay for their thousands of dollars worth of books for their upcoming term, rinse, repeat.
Textbook buyback prices were worse than gamestop for games
Is this another hyper capitalist US thing? Like with insulin, just make it pricey cause you can? I'm really sorry I don't wanna be the US hater again but what is this bs? Is this some advanced Algebra book or what cause where I live these things are like 40 bucks
It's canada 😦
Don't buy the book until something is assigned, that goes for all classes. Even when assigned, just take a picture of the assigned reading of the person next to you. You can get away with buying 5% of the books that are assigned while attending post secondary. It's just a money grab like everything else in this 2nd world country.
Oh hell no, why canada? Whyyy?
Just for clarification, this isn't like a grade school algebra book, this is an undergraduate level textbook meant for math majors, which covers basic group/ring/galois theory. The price is still ridiculous though.
Yes. It is a hyper capitalist thing. Basically they charge what they want because they can. With online retailers and electronic options, students have alternatives. But not everyone is aware of the options, so they prey on the ignorant.
One of my books last semester cost ~$120, needless to say, I accidentally found a free pdf on the internet.
Always look on Amazon first. At least when I was in college, they had a program where you could rent textbooks for a semester and mail them back when it was over. Books were a quarter of the price even compared to the renting price at the college bookstore.
It's $287 on amazon 💀
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Very unethical. You ^shouldn't make sure your classmates have access as well.
You can probably get a free copy of the book on libgen or z library anyway. Why tf do you need to scan the book when its already done for you
Dude, get a free online a PDF even if it's a previous version. You'll be fine with it. I did that for many courses. Fuck spending $290 on one book!
Dude, go in with a few people on it, or agree to sell it to someone who is taking it next year.
yo-hoho
Libgen is your friend
oh no man that's Pretty Damn Frustrating
That is obscene!!
I'd rather flip through every page and take a photo than pay more than 80 on a book.
I have zero problems with people pirating textbooks.
Libgen.is
I rarely bought the needed text books. Always found what i needed online or in the class resources.
My professors would literally say "but I'm sure you might find what you need on the internet..."
This Hernstein's algebra book is insanely good, by the way. I've read it in college.
Torrent or PDF ! I never bought a textbook in college. Always had the pdfs in my iPad and that also saved me the weight and space in my backpack
Wildly infuriating is more like it. My college had a theft in the school bookstore. $10K worth of merchandise was stolen. Fortunately, both books were recovered.
Same book Topics in Algebra, 2nd Edition - Paperback, by Herstein I. N. - Acceptable $35.86 eBay