Skip to Main Content

Open Educational Resources (OER) in the Discipline of Mathematics (July 2018): Liberal Arts Math

By Andrew Misseldine

Liberal Arts Math

This topic typically describes a general education mathematics course designed for non-STEM majors that requires minimal algebra prerequisites. The course can have many names, such as Quantitative Reasoning or Contemporary Mathematics. The strongest textbook in this category is Math in Society by David Lippman. It is certainly the most comprehensive book on liberal arts math in terms of its contents. It also most closely resembles a traditionally published textbook in its presentation, although many cosmetic improvements could be made. More importantly, it has the best homework exercises in this category, although it could benefit from many more of them. Finally, this is the only open liberal arts math textbook with online homework support through MyOpenMath, which is open source as well. Originally created through the OpenTextbookStore and produced by the Transition Math Project and the Open Course Library, a newer, hipper edition of this textbook is available now through Lumen Learning.  Other textbooks in this category that are worth mentioning are College Mathematics for Everyday Life, by Inigo et al., and Mathematical Discovery, by Andrew M. Bruckner, Brian S. Thomson, and Judith B. Bruckner.