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gwern comments on LessWrong Help Desk - free paper downloads and more (2014) - Less Wrong Discussion
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Probability and Statistics for Business Decisions, Robert Schlaifer 1959. Surprisingly expensive used, and unfortunately for such a foundational text in Bayesian decision theory, doesn't seem to be available online. If you can't get a digital copy, does anyone know of a good service or group which would produce a high-quality digital copy given a print edition?
Page-by-page .djvu scans are available here (found via this search; edit: it seems to appear sporadically in the search results). Full sequence of download links is
<http://202.116.13.3/ebook%5C24/24000522/ptiff/00000{001..744}.djvu>I wrote the following just before finding the scan of the book. I'll post it anyway.
I've used 1DollarScan for about 50 books, including math/stat textbooks, and the quality is consistently good (unless you need accurate color reproduction) even with the cheapest option (i.e., $1 per 100 pages), but you'll need to do your own post-processing to:
I use Adobe Acrobat with ABBYY FineReader for these. FineReader's OCR is more accurate than Acrobat's, but Acrobat performs okay by itself. Acrobat's trial can be indefinitely reactivated every month in a Windows VM by reverting to a pre-activation snapshot, whereas FineReader has to be bought or torrented, as its trial is overly restrictive. I don't know of any good options on Linux.
BTW, there's a used copy on Half.com for $39. Not sure if you saw that.
Huh. Weird. I did not see that IP-server, I don't think, and I'm surprised that such a thing exists. I also don't see it in your linked search! Seems to be... maybe some sort of scan prepared by a Chinese university library, going by http://202.116.13.3/detail.asp?id=120 ("Library of JI'NAN University") ?
Easy enough to get, combine, and add the metadata:
Browsing, it looks nice. Only 21MB, and the OCR looks good. Thanks!
I think there was a cheaper one on Amazon, but in any case, that was only if I couldn't find a digital copy.
They have a copy at our university library. I would need to investigate how to scan it efficiently, but I'm up for it if there isn't an easier way and noone else finds a digital copy.
Document delivery services can provide scans. However, there probably aren't any legal services which'll scan entire books for you due to copyright law. I have a hard time getting different interlibrary loan departments to get me scans of some smaller documents as well, even if you can verify the documents are in the public domain.
The easiest thing in this case would be to use a good scanner in a library. I'm fond of the overhead ones.
I keep a list of certain rare books and articles that can be found in particular libraries, and go scan a bunch of them in batches when I have the opportunity. Yesterday I visited the Library of Congress and scanned a fair number of things which could not be found elsewhere.
Edit: I assumed above that gwern does not have a copy. Vaniver in reply to me gives a good option if gwern does have a copy.
Huh; my friend converted his physical collection to a digital one years ago, and I thought he said the price was dollars per book. (Googling "physical book to ebook" gives a lot of options.) The thing I would be more concerned about is it being an image file or terrible OCR.
This is good to know. I was not aware of services which will scan books you own. I think this is the route gwern should go.
My own experience with OCR is that it's generally pretty bad unless it's done by Google and/or you put a lot of effort into cleaning the images. Though, I have only used free services, so perhaps my experience is limited.
I was thinking that if there were no digital editions yet, I could perhaps buy a used copy and either debind (for flat pages) & scan it myself or use one of the services like 1DollarScan. The problem with the latter is that I don't know how well it would work with a math book, and some of them won't return the debound pages to you...