OurBigBook.com / University lecture notes by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Basically everything that applies to the blogs section also applies here, but university lecture notes are so important to us that they deserve a bit more talk.
It is arguable that this is currently the best way to learn any university subject, and that it can already be used to learn any subject.
We basically just want to make the process more efficient and enjoyable, by making it easier:
  • to find what you want based on an initial subject hit across the best version of any author
  • and to publish your own stuff with one click, and get feedback if people like it or not, and improvement suggestions like you do you GitHub
One major problem with lecture notes is that, as the name suggests, they are merely a complement to the lecture, and don't contain enough detail for you to really learn solely from them without watching the lecture.
The only texts that generally teach in enough depth are actual books, which are almost always commercial.
So in a sense, this project can be seen as a path to upgrade free lecture notes into full blown free books, from which you can learn from scratch without any external material.
And a major way in which we believe this can be done is through the reuse of sections of lecture notes by from other universities, which greatly reduces the useless effort of writing things from scratch.
The intended mental picture is clear: the topics feature docs.ourbigbook.com/#ourbigbook-web-topics will is intended to act as the missing horizontal topic integration across lecture notes of specific universities, e.g:
MIT calculus course             UCLA calculus course

* Calculus                <---> * Calculus
  * Limit                 <--->   * Limit
    * Limit of a function
    * Limit of a series   <--->     * Limit of a series
  * Derivative            <--->   * Derivative
                                    * L'Hôpital's rule
  * Integral              <--->   * Integral
Figure 1.
Example topics page of OurBigBook.com
.
One important advantage of lecture notes is that since they are written by the teacher, they should match exactly what "students are supposed to learn to get good grades", which unfortunately is a major motivation for student's learning weather we want it or not.
One big open question for this project is to what extent notes written for lectures at one university will be relevant to the lectures at another university?
Is it possible to write notes in a way that they are naturally reusable?
It is our gut feeling that this is possible. But it almost certainly requires an small intentional effort on the part of authors.
The question then becomes whether the "become famous by getting your content viewed in other universities" factor is strong enough to attract users.
And we believe that it might, it just might be.
OurBigBook.com / Other projects by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Open source oscilloscope by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Special orthogonal group by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Like orthogonal group but without reflections. So it is a "special case" of the orthogonal group.
This is a subgroup of both the orthogonal group and the special linear group.
Capsaicin by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Active compound in pepper.
Free and open-source software by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
A more precise term for those in the know: open source software that also has a liberal license, for some definition of liberal.
Ciro Santilli defines liberal as: "can be commercialized without paying anything back" (but possibly subject to other restrictions).
He therefore does not consider Creative Commons licenses with NC to be FOSS.
For the newbs, the term open source software is good enough, since most open source software is also FOSS.
But when it's not, it's crucial to know.
Closed source is less bad on online services by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Ciro Santilli can accept closed source on server products more easily than offline, because the servers have to be paid for somehow (by stealing your private data).
Essential nutrient by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Nutrient that a given species cannot produce and must ingest in its diet.
Salted bomb by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Neutron temperature by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
The speed of neutrons greatly influences how well they are absorbed by different isotopes.
Simple group by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Does not have any non-trivial normal subgroup.
And therefore, going back to our intuition that due to the fundamental theorem on homomorphisms there is one normal group per homomorphism, a simple group is one that has no non-trivial homomorphisms.
Elliptic geometry by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Ammonium by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Super Mario by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Networking hardware company by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Germline and somatic cells by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Fluorescent protein by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Browser MMORPG by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created
Condenser microphone by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated +Created

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