Here are my three reasons:
(1) Once a book goes to the printer the contents of the book are set in concrete, at least until the next edition or, in the case of minor errors and typos, until the second printing. This is a problem for a book that places a premium on currency and relevance. I will illustrate how I will use this blog to get around this problem later in this post.
(2) In addition to updating information already in the book, I plan to use the blog to introduce facts, tidbits and resources that fall under the umbrella of "enrichment" of core concepts in the book. Typically these resources will be websites, videos or articles that I will introduce and, when appropriate, briefly discuss. In my second post I plan to start the ball rolling on this one.
(3) A blog can be a good place for networking– not as good as a social networking site but good enough for people to interact productively and share comments and ideas. As the book's author I have had some opportunities to hear from and interact with users of the book, but I would welcome much more sharing. The success of this aspect of the blog depends on you. I am hopeful that this blog will eventually take a life of its own and become a shared "meeting place" for all users of the book.
As promised, in this post I want to discuss a couple of substantive updates to information that went to press with the 7th edition and soon become dated. In one case the circumstances were foreseeable, in the other they were a bit of a shock.
Much to my regret, I had to submit the final manuscript for Chapters 1 and 2 in July 2008. Thus, by an accident of bad timing I was unable to discuss or even mention one of the most exciting presidential elections in U.S. history. My biggest regret is that I had to use the 2004 presidential election for the cartogram that illustrates the "real" Electoral College in the opening image for Chapter 2. Thanks to Mark Newman of the University of Michigan, a new cartogram with the 2008 Electoral College results (shown below) is readily available for anyone to use under the Creative Commons License (text and images may be freely distributed). I definitely plan to use it in my introduction to weighted voting and the Electoral College. To download the cartogram,
click here. In a later post I plan to discuss some of the other amazing cartograms produced by Mark and his team.
The second piece of real-world data badly in need of updating is Example 10.4 on the ups and down of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. When I wrote the example the Dow Jones was at around 12,800. As I write this post, the Dow Jones is at 8,300. Had I known the stock market was going to tank I would have done Example 10.4 (plus a lot of other things) differently. When I cover Example 10.4 in class I plan to change the numbers to reflect current values for the Dow. And who knows, maybe by then 12,800 will be a current number again. That's a cheery thought!
