tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Opinions about books)

Grétar Amazeen comments on "Opinions about books" (5350)

2010-05-04T12:23:47-07:00

My first impressions upon seeing the title of the question was that it was inappropriate. But after reading the whole question I don't think it's to bad. The OP says that he has seen some problems with the editing, and he seems to simply be asking if the sloppy editing has affected the mathematical content of the book to the extend that it becomes to hard for someone that is not an expert in the subject. Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't seem as he's asking for a complete review of the book. On another note, after reading many of the "reviews" of papers on mathscinet I can really see why some people don't consider it the canonical place to find good reviews. But that is a topic for another discussion in another place at another time.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Opinions about books" (5346)

2010-05-04T11:35:53-07:00

While I sympathize with somebody who doesn't have access to MathSciNet, I don't think MO should be used as a proxy. It is not a specific question, it is a request for a review of the whole book. The Google books page provides about as much information as you could get by having access to a good library. Tangentially related is the thread Etiquette: asking for an article/materials.

I don't buy the "it worked well for this person, so why not allow it" argument. You can use a screwdriver in place of a crow bar, and it will often work, but it will be a pain and it will likely damage the screwdriver. I think that allowing these sorts of requests for reviews of whole articles or books will make MO worse for people who use it regularly. I basically agree with fgdorais that the problem is the same as when somebody requests an expository article on some broad topic: it's cheap to ask but expensive (and often frustrating) to answer, so it provides an easy way to waste other people's time. Ideally, an MO question should be

formulated clearly enough that an expert (somebody who already "knows the answer") can understand and answer it with very little effort AND
so well-motivated and interesting that it's worth thinking about for somebody who doesn't already "know the answer".

Practically, it is sometimes difficult to fulfill both of these conditions ... a reference request can't really fulfill the second condition, so it should try to really fulfill the first. In this case, the question essentially asks, "Is the content of this book any good?" This is about as unspecific as you can get. If I were an expert on that book (suppose I'd used it very heavily), the question wouldn't be giving me any help in deciding how to answer.

Emerton comments on "Opinions about books" (5345)

2010-05-04T08:52:10-07:00

I don't agree with the objections to this question. Someone with no access to MathSciNet, and (one might thus suppose) possibly no access to a good library, asked a rather specific question about a book (are the contents good despite the sloppy editing), and got, in the space of less than a day, three answers which together make it clear that, yes, the book has many typos, but despite this, yes, the book is good.

This seems like a perfectly reasonable use of the site.

François G. Dorais comments on "Opinions about books" (5344)

2010-05-04T00:07:11-07:00

This thread might have had the negative effect of pressuring the OP in purchasing the book before he got all the information he needed. It might be useful to keep this in mind as we work out the kinks of this new system.

François G. Dorais comments on "Opinions about books" (5343)

2010-05-03T23:39:27-07:00

After thinking about it some more, I decided to vote for closing this question on the basis that MO is not an encyclopedia. The correct resource would be MathSciNet, Zentralblatt, or more specialized equivalents. I posted a link to the MathSciNet review for the book.

François G. Dorais comments on "Opinions about books" (5342)

2010-05-03T22:43:43-07:00

I agree, the question sounds like "write a review of this book." The only other possible answers I can imagine are subjective arguments on what is an acceptable number of typos. I'll vote to close tomorrow unless somebody gives a good argument in favor such questions or unless someone posts an answer invalidating the above.

PS: I just saw the posted answer and it does sound like "here is what I think of typos."

theojf comments on "Opinions about books" (5340)

2010-05-03T21:48:29-07:00

Am I just an old geezer for not liking questions like http://mathoverflow.net/questions/23385/opinions-about-the-book-lectures-on-algebraic-geometry-1-sheaves-cohomology-of ? I voted it down, but not to close. But I just don't think MO is a good place for opinions.