iNow

Why this requires explaining I may never know. You even suggested the correct answer yourself a few posts back… You aggregate data in a spreadsheet or database. The basic structure would be one column for publication year, the additional columns, one each for height, width, depth, weight, and finally page count. Perhaps topic area could offer an interesting dimension against which to slice the data, but isn’t required to address your core question / rebut your opening assertion. You then just ensure a valid sample size, cross section of the entire textbook population, and group details by year or decade to search for possible trends (or confirm their lack). Yes, I see. You agree that a valid answer is possible. You simply want others to do the heavy lifting to help you find it. Others have suggested APIs, which would be a decent place to start IMO. Which is entirely fair and I don’t fault you for it, but this simultaneously means you must begin by asking IF textbooks have changed size over time, not WHY they have as you’ve done here. Gosh. What a relief. I’ll surely sleep better tonight. Duly noted, but my points stand and remain valid. Penicillin wasn't exactly discovered by claiming mold could help us overcome infection and THEN asking how. Returning to my previous example, perhaps YOU would like to explain for us all WHY bananas are all covered in feathers? I suspect you’d be smart enough to first challenge the premise, exactly as I’ve been doing here. This isn’t exactly Marie Curie discovering radioactivity, after all.

Right, which means you’re asking for us to explain a premise which is unfounded and quite likely invalid. You may as well be asking us to explain why all bananas are now covered in feathers. Until you prove they are, in fact, covered in feathers then it’s our time being wasted by you jumping immediately to a request for reasons why this happened. Asking you in return, “well, did it happen?” is hardly unreasonable. That’s how it came across when you asked if this data even exists: Of course it exists. Why wouldn’t it? Books can be measured and pages counted. This isn’t exactly controversial. Thanks for the feedback. I’ll be sure to take that under advisement, but it’s wholly irrelevant to my valid and fair criticism that your core premise is specious and is quite likely based on flawed assumptions and limited… yep, you guessed it… anecdotes. Precisely. Yet here we are, still waiting for you to do so and instead getting comments like this:

Fine. Which of those data then are you suggesting cannot be aggregated and analyzed? I’m pushing back on the absurd suggestion you made that this question cannot be objectively answered. I’m pushing back on the idea that any of us should bother accepting your likely flawed opinions which are themselves based on extremely limited anecdotes.

Are you seriously asking me whether data on the number of pages in textbooks past and present exists or could be collected? Please tell me you’re joking.

You’re free to measure anything you want when you arrive home and publish it to the spreadsheet software of your choosing, but unless your personal library offers a properly representative cross section of the entire global population of textbooks… and more importantly, unless it also offers a valid population to use as a point of comparison between modern sizes versus historical sizes, then you’re wasting your time. Why, you ask? Because you’re still dealing with anecdotes (just a fractionally larger set of them) and any conclusions you draw from such a misguided exercise will remain specious.

Ok. Still OT

Ok. You’re right. The difference between textbooks and reference books is like the difference between potato chips and dirt bikes.

The point you’re apparently missing is one raised only 3 hours ago in an earlier post by Charon. The best textbooks tend to be those which can be used as reference books. You’re asserting some fundamental distinction that doesn’t really exist. You're making a distinction without a difference.

It’s also useful that it’s being stated openly like this with eyes wide open. Others will follow his lead, join the chorus, and assert greater pressure/have greater leverage when they are singing from this same one hymnal.

You’re asserting a distinction without a difference here.

It’s going to take more than you simply asserting this for me to accept the premise as valid. Do you have anything more than mere anecdote confirming this increase in book size (calculus or otherwise) is actually happening?

More precisely, writers of headlines and random people like you enjoy claiming that scientists are easily shocked. Further conversation should remain focused on the dinosaur egg as that’s the actual thread topic.

Perhaps then you should open a new thread exploring business school tuition and the relative returns on those investments. At best here it’s off topic… oblique, direct, or otherwise.

I offered no commentary on value or price. Are you asking me to offer some now? If so, please be more specific.

That’s such a simple request to satisfy that I wonder if you’re serious. Shall we perhaps first instead limit focus to global marketing in an age of rapidly evolving social media trends to make it at least moderately more challenging? Or maybe we narrow ourselves to dealing with international tax regulations in law versus in practice, or navigating sanctions when dealing with (or even just sailing cargo near) nations deemed to be enemies, or maybe we should stick to dealing with global data privacy regulations and laws? Asking because your request is too easy, but TBH even limiting ourselves to books on these much narrower topics would lead to fat flowing page counts… or would be if they weren’t all shared mostly as soft copies via PDF. Textbooks are bigger bc we keep learning more (yes, even in business) and students should be able to educate themselves just by reading it / without supplemental instruction.

All indicators here suggest rather clearly that this is a PEBKAC issue

We’re you connected to the internet when you did this? Even if they stopped posting them in May?

+1 for reminding me of my usual SOP to question the premise

This may be news to you, but it’s not new. The numbers you seek are easier obtained on google or Johns Hopkins

It fascinates me that this is the version which came AFTER editing the original. Will you please state this another way, preferably with a more coherent and less broken syntax next time?

Psychology and sociology do a fine job of explaining the belief in angels… and in conspiracies… and QAnon… and that the earth is flat… ad infinitum.

Yawn

Perhaps they only saw you when they looked.

John Dickerson of CBS’ 60 Minutes and Face the Nation has great bumper sticker style slogans for the US political parties: For Repubs: “They’re for commies, we’re for mommies.” For the Dems: “We’re for you, they’re for coup.” I listened to him come up with these on the fly in a podcast and literally LOL’d The “we’re for you, they’re for coup” one came first and the commies/mommies one was an afterthought for balance. Some pol needs to use it

We seem to be aligned. then