E-Books and Math

I purchase e-books because I do not have space any more for the hard copy books.  I still order some so I really need to go through some of the books I have now to get rid of so I'll have space for those.

On the first of the month, Amazon always posts the new books for the monthly deal where instead of paying $12.99, you only pay 2.99.

The other thing is that Amazon lists the pages for each book they sell in digital form.  The page number might be at the end of the description or it might be at the bottom in the part that tells you how big the book in electronic size.

Its important to check the size of the book you are buying because if you are like me, you really do not want to spend $5.99 for a 28 page book.  Don't look like that!  I've seen cases like that.  Or $2.99 for a book that's 287 pages long.

I seldom buy a book that has less than 100 pages unless its a very specialized book and I try not to spend over about $6.00 per book because I feel a digital book should cost less than the print copy not the same or more.  A digital book is so much easier to publish, requires nothing in terms of actual printing, and takes less to produce.

There are several math opportunities available a math teacher could implement in the classroom on digital books.

1.  Create a list of books on sale such has those on the monthly deals list at Amazon.  Have students check every book for the print price, original digital price, and the sale digital price.  Students can analyze to determine the percent difference from the print to original digital price is.  They can then determine the percent mark down from the original to sale price of the digital version.

2.  Create a list of digital books on a topic.  Have students look at the number of pages for each ebook.  Have them justify which books they would purchase and why.  One time, I projected the description of two different digital books on toilet training your cat on the board.  We talked about the prices, I think one was $4.99 for a 15 page book while the other was $2.99 for 32 pages.  I asked which one they might buy and why.  I accepted neither as an answer as long as they could justify it.

3. In addition, students can compare the prices of one book in digital form, hardback, paperback, in used and new versions.   The reason behind this, is many used books may be way less but by the time you've added shipping into the cost, the used version is not any cheaper.  Students can create a list of prices for used books broken down by condition before turning the information into various graphs. 

Its important for students to learn to do comparisons based on real world data.  I find the digital world interesting because anyone can publish books now.  In addition, many authors price their digital version higher than the hard copy version.  That I do not understand but it happens and the technical books tend to be more expensive in digital form, just like they are in hard copy.  You might want to let students check it out themselves and then make suggestions on why this happens.

I did take a break from fashion because it is the first of the month.  I'll get back to fashion math in a day or two.  I am getting ready to head back to work so I get distracted.  Have a great day and let me know what  you think.