APEX is a consortium of authors who collaborate to produce high-quality, low-cost textbooks. The current textbook-writing paradigm is facing a potential revolution as desktop publishing and electronic formats increase in popularity. However, writing a good textbook is no easy task, as the time requirements alone are substantial. It takes countless hours of work to produce text, write examples and exercises, edit and publish. Through collaboration, however, the cost to any individual can be lessened, allowing us to create texts that we freely distribute electronically and sell in printed form for an incredibly low cost. Having said that, nothing is entirely free; someone always bears some cost. This text “cost” the authors of this book their time, and that was not enough. APEX Calculus would not exist had not the Virginia Military Institute, through a generous Jackson-Hope grant, given the lead author significant time away from teaching so he could focus on this text.
Each text is available as a free .pdf, protected by a Creative Commons Attribution — Noncommercial 4.0 copyright. That means you can give the .pdf to anyone you like, print it in any form you like, and even edit the original content and redistribute it. If you do the latter, you must clearly reference this work and you cannot sell your edited work for money.
We encourage others to adapt this work to fit their own needs. One might add sections that are “missing” or remove sections that your students won’t need. The source files can be found at https://github.com/APEXCalculus.
You can learn more at www.vmi.edu/APEX.
Greg Hartman