So, we all know you're ridiculously overpriced. There is no reason you should cost the hundreds and hundreds of dollars that you do. You abuse the fact that when students buy you, they have no choice but to pay the exorbitant prices that you charge. This is a huge problem, and the main reason I always avoid buying you if possible, but still not even the reason I'm writing to you today.
If I'm going to be stuck paying hundreds of dollars for you, how about you at least proof-read yourself a bit. It is just ridiculous that despite your crazy price, and the fact that you constantly revise yourself, you still end up with errors. For example, today we were going over a problem in class. The textbook we were using was a fourth edition, so by now there really shouldn't be any stupid errors in it, and I paid $130 for a used copy of it. At prices like that, you better be perfect.
So we're going over this problem, basically it boils down to deciding for some hypothetical company how many TV, magazine, and newspaper ads they should buy to get the most exposure for the least cost. They tell us that each TV ad gets exposure to 1,300 thousand people (and they give us the rest of the information we need, but that's not relevant to my point). We solve it, it has an answer, everything's fine. Then later they add more constraints to make it a more complicated problem. Now they want to make sure they get at least a certain amount of exposure to young children, and young children's parents. Each TV ad will supposedly be seen by 1.2 million young children, and .5 million young-children's parents.
Let's convert this all to plain numbers. As told to us in the first part, 1,300,000 people will see the TV ad. The second part says that 1,200,000 young children and 500,000 young children's parents will see the ad, combine those for a total of 1,700,000. So of the 1,300,000 people that will see the TV ad, 1,700,000 are young children and their parents. How is this possible?
This is not the first time I've seen problems in you stupid textbooks. It would be nice if something that I have to pay way too much for, would at least be correct. I've seen answers in the back to problems be wrong, I've seen problems that make no sense like the one today, I've seen typos and grammatical errors.
I don't think proof-reading is too much to ask.
-SF
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Dear Wikipedia
Honestly, you are one of the best sites on the internet. Sure Google can get information on just about everything, but most of the time the way it does that is just by linking to you. Your an incredibly valuable resource, and provide vast knowledge to everyone. Hell, having access to you basically gives each individual person the combined knowledge of everyone.
Wikipedia, you are often called an "unreliable" resource by teachers, and students are told they cannot use you. Don't let that get you down, the students understand how useful you are and try to find ways to utilize you anyways. I bet teachers are just frustrated because you're so useful, that you have turned comprehensive research papers into simple, one-night projects.
So stick around, we'd all be lost without you.
-SF
Wikipedia, you are often called an "unreliable" resource by teachers, and students are told they cannot use you. Don't let that get you down, the students understand how useful you are and try to find ways to utilize you anyways. I bet teachers are just frustrated because you're so useful, that you have turned comprehensive research papers into simple, one-night projects.
So stick around, we'd all be lost without you.
-SF
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Dear TV Tropes
TV Tropes, your site is wonderfully interesting. Somehow you often manage to take what was meant to be quickly looking at one thing, and turning it into hours of clicking on links to other articles and reading more things that lead you to other articles, and so on. Sometimes you can even be better at this than Wikipedia.
The best part is that you have way more than just stuff from television as your name might imply. You have a vast archive of things from video games, literature, tabletop games, and probably plenty of other things too. I'm not really sure if you have an actual purpose other than just entertaining reading, and honestly most of the stuff I read on your site is about things that I already have a basic understanding of what they are and why they are a common occurring, but somehow you still make it incredibly interesting.
Like today, when I was on my computer, thinking of who I wanted to write a letter to, I ended up getting linked to an article on your site. Then, suddenly, it was like half an hour later and I had read like a dozen or more pages and hadn't actually accomplished anything.
Thank you for being there, and being so interesting.
-SF
The best part is that you have way more than just stuff from television as your name might imply. You have a vast archive of things from video games, literature, tabletop games, and probably plenty of other things too. I'm not really sure if you have an actual purpose other than just entertaining reading, and honestly most of the stuff I read on your site is about things that I already have a basic understanding of what they are and why they are a common occurring, but somehow you still make it incredibly interesting.
Like today, when I was on my computer, thinking of who I wanted to write a letter to, I ended up getting linked to an article on your site. Then, suddenly, it was like half an hour later and I had read like a dozen or more pages and hadn't actually accomplished anything.
Thank you for being there, and being so interesting.
-SF
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Dear Overbearing Parents
Parenting is a very important part of family life. If you have kids, taking good care of them and helping them develop into happy, responsible adults who are productive members of society is probably the most important thing you will ever do with your life.
So how come so many of you parents are so bad at it? You try way too hard, or maybe you're not trying at all, it's hard to tell sometimes. Discipline is important sure, but many of you go a little overboard with your controlling, punishing, and high expectations. And yes, getting used to having to work for things is good, but forcing your child to practically be your slave is not good either. You need to find a balance between being loving parents, and teaching them responsibility and work ethic.
You also need to understand that there's a trade-off between telling your kids they need to do their homework, and letting them do their own thing. Sure, kids don't want to do it and it should be enforced to some degree, but you also need to understand that constantly getting on your kids case about it, or about anything else they're supposed to be doing, just makes them want to do it even less.
None of this stuff is very complicated, just try a little harder to actually be good parents.
-SF
So how come so many of you parents are so bad at it? You try way too hard, or maybe you're not trying at all, it's hard to tell sometimes. Discipline is important sure, but many of you go a little overboard with your controlling, punishing, and high expectations. And yes, getting used to having to work for things is good, but forcing your child to practically be your slave is not good either. You need to find a balance between being loving parents, and teaching them responsibility and work ethic.
You also need to understand that there's a trade-off between telling your kids they need to do their homework, and letting them do their own thing. Sure, kids don't want to do it and it should be enforced to some degree, but you also need to understand that constantly getting on your kids case about it, or about anything else they're supposed to be doing, just makes them want to do it even less.
None of this stuff is very complicated, just try a little harder to actually be good parents.
-SF
Friday, January 27, 2012
Dear People with Stupid Opinions
Everyone is entitled to their opinions. There's nothing wrong with having different opinions, and disagreeing on things. One of the important things about our country is free speech, it's okay for people to have their own opinions and voice them.
But there's a difference between having legitimate, different opinion, and being wrong. Let's start with an example that I think everyone will agree with me on, so you can see my point. The world is round, this is a fact. Some people, for some reason, still believe that the Earth is flat. Some would argue that it's their right to have their opinion about the shape of the Earth. In general, that's true, they have the right to have their own opinion on things, but this is not a case like that. The shape of the Earth is not an opinion, this is a hard fact that has been conclusively proven in a multitude of ways. Thinking the Earth is flat is not "your opinion" or anything, you're just plain wrong.
Of course, that particular example isn't a big deal. There are very few of you who actually believe that, and for the most part the rest of us are content just laughing at the silly idea and not caring. The problem is that people act similarly with plenty of other things. "Global warming isn't real", "evolution isn't true", "the holocaust didn't happen", these are just a few common examples. Now, I know some of these, particularly evolution, are a little bit sensitive topics for some people, but the fact of the matter is that all these things are real. I'm not talking about the degree to which each of them is real. It's not about how strong global warming is, it's not about if life was created by God or evolved all by chance, it's just about the concepts existing at least on some level. You cannot be of the "opinion" that scientific fact is wrong, that's not an opinion, that's just being wrong.
Stop being stupid, and accept the difference between fact and opinion.
-SF
But there's a difference between having legitimate, different opinion, and being wrong. Let's start with an example that I think everyone will agree with me on, so you can see my point. The world is round, this is a fact. Some people, for some reason, still believe that the Earth is flat. Some would argue that it's their right to have their opinion about the shape of the Earth. In general, that's true, they have the right to have their own opinion on things, but this is not a case like that. The shape of the Earth is not an opinion, this is a hard fact that has been conclusively proven in a multitude of ways. Thinking the Earth is flat is not "your opinion" or anything, you're just plain wrong.
Of course, that particular example isn't a big deal. There are very few of you who actually believe that, and for the most part the rest of us are content just laughing at the silly idea and not caring. The problem is that people act similarly with plenty of other things. "Global warming isn't real", "evolution isn't true", "the holocaust didn't happen", these are just a few common examples. Now, I know some of these, particularly evolution, are a little bit sensitive topics for some people, but the fact of the matter is that all these things are real. I'm not talking about the degree to which each of them is real. It's not about how strong global warming is, it's not about if life was created by God or evolved all by chance, it's just about the concepts existing at least on some level. You cannot be of the "opinion" that scientific fact is wrong, that's not an opinion, that's just being wrong.
Stop being stupid, and accept the difference between fact and opinion.
-SF
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